Chapter 14 - Nanoparticles for the targeted drug delivery in lung cancer

Abstract

According to the Global cancer statistics GLOBOCAN database, there will be an estimated 18.1 million new cancer cases and 9.6 million cancer deaths reported in 2018. Lung cancer (LC) is the most commonly diagnosed cancer, that is, 11.6% of the total cases and responsible for 18.4% of cancer deaths. Due to late stage diagnosis, it is often noted as a major cause of death. Anticancer chemotherapeutic drugs are the mainstay of therapy currently used in metastatic cancers. The major problems associated with the conventional therapeutic agents are they are unable to discriminate normal and cancerous cell. The toxicity of conventional chemotherapeutic drugs and the development of multidrug resistance, support the need to find new effective targeted treatments based on the changes in the molecular biology of the tumor cells. In recent years, nanotechnology has explored dimensions in the detection, diagnosis, and therapy of cancer. Nanoparticle-based therapeutics is now finding its applications in the diagnosis, imaging, screening, and treatment of primary and metastatic tumors. The application and expansion of novel nanocarriers for drug delivery is an exciting and challenging research filed, in particular for the delivery of emerging cancer therapies. With the potential advantages of pulmonary route and recent novel drug delivery strategies such as nanocarriers with anticancer drugs may be the promising alternative drug treatment over conventional drug delivery approaches, and for focusing on the same this chapter summarizes and discusses the investigated formulation approaches for the pulmonary delivery. Targeted delivery of drug to the lungs can be achieved by modifying the surface of the NPs by conjugating them with various targeting moieties. Some of the current progress and challenges in nanoparticle-based drug delivery systems for LC treatment such as the health effects associates with the NPs are discussed in this chapter.