C 2014 American Chemical Society Vascular Targeting of Nanocarriers: Perplexing Aspects of the Seemingly Straightforward Paradigm

DDS promise to improve pharmacotherapy by optimizing: (i) drug solubility, (ii) its isola-tion from the body en route to the target site, (iii) its pharmacokinetics (PK) and bio-distribution (BD), (iv) control of activity, (v) permeation through biological barriers, and (vi) targeting (Figure 1).15 Nanocarriers for drug delivery have diverse chemical con-tents,610 morphologies, surface features, geometries, and physical properties.1,1120 Intricacies of their design have been re-viewed elsewhere;2124 this article instead focuses on the biological aspects of carrier interactions with target cells. DDS and drugs are eliminated by th