Challenges, expectations and limits for nanoparticles-based therapeutics in cancer: A focus on nano-albumin-bound drugs

Improving the efficacy-toxicity balance of anticancer agents remains an ongoing challenge in oncology. Beside the ever-growing development of innovative drugs addressing newly discovered molecular targets, nanotechnologies provide today a promising and exciting strategy to achieve this goal. The idea of carrying active compounds to their respective targets so as to improve their efficacy while sparing healthy tissue and reducing side-effects is not new. However, this area of research is in constant rise, and benefits from the latest advances in the field of biopharmaceutics, medicinal chemistry and nanomedicine. In addition to anthracyclines already widely present as liposomal drugs on the shelves, a variety of anticancer drugs can be now encapsulated into different chemical of structures so as to enhance their specificity toward malignant cells, mainly through improved pharmacokinetics profiles. Indeed, the recent advances in chemistry allow now a wide variety of scaffolds to be used as drug-carriers, so as optimize the delivery of cytotoxics. Even more recently, conjugated-drugs such as nanoalbumin (Nab) conjugates have emerged as a new promising alternative to improve both anticancer drugs distribution in the body and efficacy/toxicity balance eventually. This review covers the achievements and current limits of nanoparticles in oncology, with a special focus on nab-paclitaxel as a paradigmatic drug for this new generation of conjugated entities. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.