Drug delivery to resistant tumors: the potential of poly(alkyl cyanoacrylate) nanoparticles

Simultaneous cellular resistance to multiple lipophilic drugs represents a major problem in cancer chemotherapy. This drug resistance may appear clinically either as a lack of tumor size reduction or as the occurrence of clinical relapse after an initial positive response to antitumor treatment. The resistance mechanism can have different origins either directly linked to specific mechanisms developed by the tumor tissue or connected to the more general problem of distribution of a drug towards its targeted tissue. The purpose of this paper is to summarize the results of the use of poly(alkyl cyanoacrylate) nanoparticles to overcome multidrug resistance (MDR) phenomena at both the cellular and the non-cellular level. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.