Abstract
Diverse nanosystems for use in cancer imaging and therapy have been designed and their clinical applications have been assessed. Among a variety of materials available to fabricate nanosystems, poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) has been widely used due to its biocompatibility and biodegradability. In order to provide tumor-targeting and diagnostic properties, PLGA or PLGA nanoparticles (NPs) can be modified with other functional materials. Hydrophobic or hydrophilic therapeutic cargos can be placed in the internal space or adsorbed onto the surface of PLGA NPs. Protocols for the fabrication of PLGA-based NPs for cancer imaging and therapy are already well established. Moreover, the biocompatibility and biodegradability of PLGA may elevate its feasibility for clinical application in injection formulations. Size-controlled NP’s properties and ligand–receptor interactions may provide passive and active tumor-targeting abilities, respectively, after intravenous administration. Additionally, the introduction of several imaging modalities to PLGA-based NPs can enable drug delivery guided by in vivo imaging. Versatile platform technology of PLGA-based NPs can be applied to the delivery of small chemicals, peptides, proteins, and nucleic acids for use in cancer therapy. This review describes recent findings and insights into the development of tumor-targeted PLGA-based NPs for use of cancer imaging and therapy.
Highlights
For active tumor-targeting strategies together with a passive tumor-targeting approach (i.e., enhanced permeability and retention (EPR) effect), the outer surface of poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA)-based NPs has been engineered with various functional groups
NPs loaded with anti-tumor agents for brain tumor-specific delivery could be modified with targeting moieties, which can be bound to those carriers on the blood-to-brain barrier (BBB) and receptors (i.e., CD44 receptor, folate receptor, and Tf receptor) on the tumor cells [27,51,89,91]
Most PLGA NPs developed for anticancer therapy share therapeutic advantages, such as passive targeting via the EPR effect and controlled drug release (Figure 4)
Summary
There has been much progress in the development of nanomedicines for use cancer imaging and therapy [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20]. Various types of synthetic polymers (e.g., poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) [PLGA]), natural polymers (e.g., chitosan [CS], chondroitin sulfate [CD], and hyaluronic acid [HA]), lipids (e.g., phospholipid and cholesterol), nucleic acids (e.g., DNA), peptides/proteins (e.g., albumin and lysozyme), and inorganic materials (e.g., gold, iron, silver, and zinc) have been used to prepare nanoformulations for cancer therapy [39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50,51,52,53,54,55,56,57,58] Among these diverse materials, PLGA is a favored substance for the fabrication of nanoparticles (NPs) aimed at drug delivery [59,60,61]. Information regarding the preparation, cellular uptake and distribution, in vivo tumor targeting, in vivo cancer therapy, and in vivo pharmacokinetics of PLGA-based NPs will be provided
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