Abstract
Lung cancer (LC) is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths, responsible for approximately 18.4% of all cancer mortalities in both sexes combined. The use of systemic therapeutics remains one of the primary treatments for LC. However, the therapeutic efficacy of these agents is limited due to their associated severe adverse effects, systemic toxicity and poor selectivity. In contrast, pulmonary delivery of anticancer drugs can provide many advantages over conventional routes. The inhalation route allows the direct delivery of chemotherapeutic agents to the target LC cells with high local concertation that may enhance the antitumor activity and lead to lower dosing and fewer systemic toxicities. Nevertheless, this route faces by many physiological barriers and technological challenges that may significantly affect the lung deposition, retention, and efficacy of anticancer drugs. The use of lipid-based nanocarriers could potentially overcome these problems owing to their unique characteristics, such as the ability to entrap drugs with various physicochemical properties, and their enhanced permeability and retention (EPR) effect for passive targeting. Besides, they can be functionalized with different targeting moieties for active targeting. This article highlights the physiological, physicochemical, and technological considerations for efficient inhalable anticancer delivery using lipid-based nanocarriers and their cutting-edge role in LC treatment.
Highlights
IntroductionPublisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations
The literature selection in this review was performed by manually searching the PubMed, Google Scholar, ScienceDirect, and Wiley Library databases for published literature on inhalable chemotherapy via lipid-based nanocarriers using various keywords such as (Inhaled/aerosolized/nebulized/dry powder inhalers/inhalable chemotherapy for Lung cancer (LC), inhaled liposomes for LC, aerosolized solid lipid nanoparticles (SLNs) for LC, DPIs of nanostructured lipid carriers (NLCs) for LC, inhalable nanoemulsions (NEs) for LC, lipid-based nanoparticles for LC, etc.)
The lipid-based nanocarriers are gaining significant interest by researchers working on the development of novel formulations for the pulmonary delivery of anticancer drugs owing to their biocompatible, biodegradable, non-toxic, and non-irritant nature, the ability to entrap and deliver diverse molecules in a controlled manner with enhanced bioavailability, ability to transport across blood vessels and different membranes and barriers in addition to the ease of preparation and scale-up [98,99,100,101,102]
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. The extensive research in this field has yielded a wide range of nanosystems (including the lipid-based nanocarriers) that have the potential to dramatically change how LC is treated nowadays [13,14,15] This is attributed to their ability to entrap drugs with different physicochemical properties, suitability for combination therapy, and enhanced permeability and retention (EPR) effect which makes them highly effective in passive targeting, besides; their surface could be functionalized with different targeting moieties for active targeting, so they can selectively target cancerous cells and neoplasms. The advances in using the inhalable lipid-based nanocarriers for combating LC and their evaluation on the in vitro, in vivo, and clinical studies are presented
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