Smart drug delivery systems for cancer therapy

Ideal nanocarrier-based therapy, contains first a controlled mechanism for drug delivery, to minimize side effects in healthy tissues, and second has the ability to provide a controlled drug release to extend the therapeutic duration of the therapeutic treatment. Nanocarrier based chemotherapy is one of the few nanotechnology-based medical therapies that reached the clinics, already in 1995, when the commercial anti cancer drug delivery system DOXIL® was introduced in the market, but available systems are far from optimal selectivity and controlled release. Our work describes a combined spectroscopy and imaging study to evaluate the two aspects of a smart drug delivery system. In our study we used these DODAX:MO (1:2) formulations with a diameter of approx. 100 nm to study the biophysical characteristics when used for trafficking paclitaxel (PTX) and doxorubicin (DOX), both widely used chemotherapeutic anti-cancer drugs. Taking advantage of the of DOX intrinsic fluorescence also the cell uptake is studied for DODAB:MO (1:2) liposomal formulations.