Special issue on cancer nanomedicine: precision delivery and advanced targeting strategies
Published 09 August, 2021
Since the nanotechnology revolution began in the mid-1950s, tremendous progress has been made in the fabrication of versatile materials (with porous and non-porous architectures) for cancer therapy. These advances are due, in part, to tunable morphological and physicochemical attributes and help to address poor bioavailability and targeted delivery of drugs through the enhanced permeation and retention (EPR) effect. However, the performance efficacy of these nanosystems is often limited due to acquired multi-drug resistance and other complex biological barriers, which restrict their intracellular bioavailability. Several, innovative, materials-based composites have been developed, possessing stimuli, such as pH/thermos/molecular/magnetic/light-responsive delivery and innovative therapeutic modalities (light-based and chemodynamic inactivation). These composites are also surface-functionalised with targeting ligands towards precisely guided therapy. In addition, modulation of the tumour microenvironment has been envisaged as a potential strategy to improve drug exposure to solid tumours.
For this thematic issue, we are seeking submissions related to synthetic strategies, plausible mechanistic elucidations, as well as opportunities and challenges towards clinical translation of these innovative composites with considerations of biosafety and degradability. We also welcome studies on mechanistic understanding of nano-bio interactions to accelerate the efficacy of cancer nanomedicine through precise delivery, and target cancers at both preclinical and clinical levels.
Topics covered:
- Drug delivery
- Multi-drug resistance
- Targeted, sustained and controlled delivery
- Tumour microenvironment modulation
- Light-based (PDT, PTT) and chemodynamic therapies
- Nano-bio interactions
- Cellular Internalisation mechanisms
- Biosafety and degradability of nanoformulations
- Pharmacokinetics-pharmacodynamics of anticancer drugs
- Scope for clinical translation
Important deadlines:
- Submission deadline: 30 June 2022
Submission instructions:
Please read the Guide for Authors before submitting. All articles should be submitted online; please select Cancer nanomedicine on submission.
Guest editors:
- Prof. Dr. Ranjith Kumar Kankala, Huaqiao University, China. Email: ranjithkankala@hqu.edu.cn
- Prof. Dr. Wei Tao, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, USA. Email: wtao@bwh.harvard.edu
- Dr. Prem Narayan Gupta, CSIR-Indian Institute of Integrative Medicine, India. Email: pngupta@iiim.res.in