Abstract
Drug targeting and nanomedicine are different strategies for improving the delivery of drugs to their target. Several antibodies, immuno-drug conjugates and nanomedicines are already approved and used in clinics, demonstrating the potential of such approaches, including the recent examples of the DNA- and RNA-based vaccines against COVID-19 infections. Nevertheless, targeting remains a major challenge in drug delivery and different aspects of how these objects are processed at organism and cell level still remain unclear, hampering the further development of efficient targeted drugs. In this review, we compare properties and advantages of smaller targeted drug constructs on the one hand, and larger nanomedicines carrying higher drug payload on the other hand. With examples from ongoing research in our Department and experiences from drug delivery to liver fibrosis, we illustrate opportunities in drug targeting and nanomedicine and current challenges that the field needs to address in order to further improve their success.
Highlights
Nanosized drug carriers and smaller drug targeting constructs are used in the field of advanced drug delivery systems to improve the delivery of drugs to the target site
Drug delivery to the desired site of action is favored by a prolonged circulation time in blood, which is achieved via different mechanisms, such as for instance by the prevention of renal clearance through size increase and by protecting the therapeutic compounds from degradation in plasma through shielding
In the case of tumor targeting, this is often achieved by the so-called enhanced permeability and retention (EPR) effect, where the nanomedicine passively accumulates into the tumor tissue by diffusion through leaky tumor blood vessels [4,5]
Summary
Nanosized drug carriers (nanomedicines) and smaller drug targeting constructs are used in the field of advanced drug delivery systems to improve the delivery of drugs to the target site They can achieve this via different mechanisms and, if combined, these two strategies are an extremely powerful tool for future innovative therapies. This review, outlining our own research activities of the past years and putting them in a broader perspective, will discuss our approaches to address both issues, while presenting some of the current challenges in these applications Overall, both larger drug delivery systems and smaller targeted constructs constitute versatile platforms for multiple therapeutic entities. Both larger drug delivery systems and smaller targeted constructs constitute versatile platforms for multiple therapeutic entities The requirements of such platforms may differ because both types of therapeutics are subjected to different clearance mechanisms and driving forces that affect their distribution in plasma, tissues and within cells. The first step for the development of efficient drug delivery systems and targeted drugs is to obtain fundamental knowledge on these mechanisms and the existing driving forces
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