Recent Advances in Lung Cancer Therapy Based on Nanomaterials: A Review.

Lung cancer is one of the commonest cancers with a significant mortality rate for both genders, particularly in men. Lung cancer is recognized as one of the leading causes of death worldwide, which threatens the lives of over 1.6 million people every day. Although cancer is the leading cause of death in industrialized countries, conventional anticancer medications are unlikely to increase patients' life expectancy and quality of life significantly. In recent years, there are significant advances in the development and applications of nanotechnology in cancer treatment. The superiority of nanostructured approaches is that they act more selectively than traditional agents. This progress led to the development of a novel field of cancer treatment known as nanomedicine. Various formulations based on nanocarriers, including lipids, polymers, liposomes, nanoparticles and dendrimers have opened new horizons in lung cancer therapy. The application and expansion of nano-agents lead to an exciting and challenging research era in pharmaceutical science, especially for the delivery of emerging anti-cancer agents. The objective of this review is to discuss the recent advances in three types of nanoparticle formulations for lung cancer treatments modalities, including liposomes, polymeric micelles, and dendrimers for efficient drug delivery. Afterward, we have summarized the promising clinical data on nanomaterials based therapeutic approaches in ongoing clinical studies.

Investigating Efficacy of Three DNA-Aptamers in Targeted Plasmid Delivery to Human Prostate Cancer Cell Lines.

Selection of targeted and efficient carriers to deliver drugs and genes to cells and tissues is still a major challenge and to overcome this obstacle, aptamers conjugated to nanoparticles have been broadly examined. To assess whether polycation of aptamers can improve plasmid delivery efficacy, we investigated the effect of three DNA-aptamers (AS1411, WY-5a, and Sgs-8) conjugated to branched polyethylenimine (b-PEI; MW ∼25 kDa) with different combinations of gene (plasmid) for delivery to prostate cancer cell lines (DU145 and PC3). According to transfection assessments, the dual conjugation of aptamers (AS:WY) with b-PEI produced the best results and increased the efficiency of plasmid delivery to up to three folds compared to unmodified PEI. Surprisingly, triple aptamer arrangement not only reduced transfection ability but also showed cytotoxicity. While our results demonstrated potential synergistic effects of AS1411 and WY-5a aptamers for gene delivery, it is important to note that the present evidence relies on the aptamer and cell types.