Application of co-delivery systems in cancer treatment / 国际药学研究杂志

ABSTRACT

Chemotherapy plays an important role in cancer treatment. However, the low water-solubility and serious side effects are still the biggest obstacles in clinic. In addition, the wide use of chemotherapeutic drugs would result in the multidrug resistance (MDR)and the single chemotherapy could not meet the demand of clinic anymore. Combination therapy by two or more drugs used in the same time, has become the best choice for cancer patients. It not only enhances the cytotoxicity of the chemotherapeutic drugs due to the synergistic effect of the drugs, but also inhibits the MDR to improve uptake and cytotoxicity of the chemotherapeutic drugs when adding MDR inhibitors. The drug delivery system can improve the water-solubility due to the good biocompatibility of biodegradable material which is the most property for drug delivery carriers. In addition, the targeting ability of the system and the controlled release of chemotherapeutic drugs can also reduce the side effects of drugs such as the cardiotoxicity of doxorubicin. The co-delivery system loading two or more chemotherapeutic drugs in the same carrier can get better cytotoxicity than the combination therapy using free drugs due to the efficient delivery of chemotherapeutic drugs to cancer cells, and are even better than the combination of single drug-loaded drug delivery systems because the chemotherapeutic drugs can get into the cancers cells in the same time. In addition, with the rapid development of gene therapy, the co-delivery of drugs and genes has also been a hot topic these days. In this paper, we focus on the preparation, characteristics and application of drug+drug and drug+gene co-delivery system, which can produce the synergistic effects or inhibit the MDR of cancer cells.