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Review
. 2023 Jan 4:10:1095598.
doi: 10.3389/fchem.2022.1095598. eCollection 2022.

"Smart" drug delivery: A window to future of translational medicine

Abhilash Rana  1 , Meheli Adhikary  1 , Praveen Kumar Singh  1 , Bhudev C Das  1   2 , Seema Bhatnagar  1
Affiliations
Review

"Smart" drug delivery: A window to future of translational medicine

Abhilash Rana et al. Front Chem. .

Abstract

Chemotherapy is the mainstay of cancer treatment today. Chemotherapeutic drugs are non-selective and can harm both cancer and healthy cells, causing a variety of adverse effects such as lack of specificity, cytotoxicity, short half-life, poor solubility, multidrug resistance, and acquiring cancer stem-like characteristics. There is a paradigm shift in drug delivery systems (DDS) with the advent of smarter ways of targeted cancer treatment. Smart Drug Delivery Systems (SDDSs) are stimuli responsive and can be modified in chemical structure in response to light, pH, redox, magnetic fields, and enzyme degradation can be future of translational medicine. Therefore, SDDSs have the potential to be used as a viable cancer treatment alternative to traditional chemotherapy. This review focuses mostly on stimuli responsive drug delivery, inorganic nanocarriers (Carbon nanotubes, gold nanoparticles, Meso-porous silica nanoparticles, quantum dots etc.), organic nanocarriers (Dendrimers, liposomes, micelles), antibody-drug conjugates (ADC) and small molecule drug conjugates (SMDC) based SDDSs for targeted cancer therapy and strategies of targeted drug delivery systems in cancer cells.

Keywords: active targeting; cancer; nano-therapy; passive targeting; smart drug delivery systems (SDDSs); targeted cancer therapy; targeted drug delivery; translational medicine.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Overview of a SDDSs using liposomes as smart carrier.
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Some example of Targeting Ligands utilized in SDDSs.
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
Some examples of Smart Drug Delivery Carriers.
FIGURE 4
FIGURE 4
Chemical structures of representative cytotoxic agents used in SDDSs.
FIGURE 5
FIGURE 5
Different targeting strategies for anticancer therapeutics.
FIGURE 6
FIGURE 6
Active and Passive targeting delivery of drug payload by SDDSs.
FIGURE 7
FIGURE 7
Stimuli responsive smart drug delivery.
FIGURE 8
FIGURE 8
Smart nanocarriers used in SDDSs.
FIGURE 9
FIGURE 9
The general mechanism of action of an antibody-drug conjugate (ADC).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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