Journal de la nanomédecine et de la découverte biothérapeutique
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Efficient and Safe Intra-cellular Transport of Targeted Nanomedicines: are we there Yet?

Silvia Muro

Efficient transport of drugs into cells in the body is a key factor to achieve relevant therapeutic effects for most clinical applications. However, this aspect still represents a main obstacle for a considerable number of therapeutic agents, such as poorly soluble drugs, relatively large molecules, and many biological agents, which cannot gain access to the intra-cellular compartment per se. In such cases, coupling of therapeutic agents to molecules and/or supra-molecular carriers that display affinity toward biological surfaces in the body (a strategy known as drug targeting), holds promise to improve drug transport to those sites where the therapeutic action is required [1-3]. The development of strategies aimed to improving control of drug biodistribution at the cellular and/or sub-cellular level is, hence, a very active area of research. Affinity molecules can be chosen to favor adhesion to either broadly distributed or rather specific biological markers, depending on the degree of selectivity required for a particular clinical application. Drugs and/or their carriers can be targeted to distribution particular cellular receptors involved in endocytic transport or coupled to cell penetrating peptides, in order to achieve intracellular.