Skip to main content

Targeted Drug Delivery

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Cancer
  • 56 Accesses

Synonyms

Drug targeting; Site-specific drug delivery

Definition

Targeted drug delivery is to site specifically deliver or activate the therapeutic compounds in tumor. Thus, the targeted drug delivery is expected to enhance drug efficacy by increasing local active drug concentration in tumor and to decrease side effect by minimizing drug exposure in normal tissues.

Characteristics

Anticancer drugs possess a greater potential of toxicity and much narrower therapeutic index than any other categories of medication. Chemotherapy is often dose and toxicity limited. A delicate dose regimen is usually required to balance drug efficacy, drug toxicity, and drug resistance; a high dose might cause toxicity while a low dose might induce drug resistance. In addition, anticancer drugs are usually designed to act on the fast proliferating cancercells. However, rapid proliferation is also the feature of some normal cells such as the bone marrow, hair follicles, and intestinal epithelium. Although...

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Brannon-Peppas L, Blanchette JO (2004) Nanoparticle and targeted systems for cancer therapy. Adv Drug Deliv Rev 56:1649–1659

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Hood JD, Bednarski M, Frausto R et al (2002) Tumor regression by targeted gene delivery to the neovasculature. Science 296:2404–2407

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Rooseboom M, Commandeur JNM, Vermeulen NPE (2004) Enzyme-catalyzed activation of anticancer prodrugs. Pharmacol Rev 56:53–102

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Schrama D, Reisfeld RA, Becker JC (2006) Antibody targeted drugs as cancer therapeutics. Nat Rev Drug Discov 5:147–159

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Springer CJ, Niculescu-Duvaz I (2000) Prodrug-activating systems in suicide gene therapy. J Clin Invest 105:1161–1167

    Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

See Also

  • (2012) CD33. In: Schwab M (ed) Encyclopedia of Cancer, 3rd edn. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, p 698. doi: 10.1007/978-3-642-16483-5_927

    Google Scholar 

  • (2012) Doxorubicin. In: Schwab M (ed) Encyclopedia of Cancer, 3rd edn. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, p 1159. doi: 10.1007/978-3-642-16483-5_1722

    Google Scholar 

  • (2012) Endothelial Cells. In: Schwab M (ed) Encyclopedia of Cancer, 3rd edn. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, p 1251. doi: 10.1007/978-3-642-16483-5_1896

    Google Scholar 

  • (2012) Folate Receptor Alpha. In: Schwab M (ed) Encyclopedia of Cancer, 3rd edn. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, p 1440. doi: 10.1007/978-3-642-16483-5_6960

    Google Scholar 

  • (2012) Liposomes. In: Schwab M (ed) Encyclopedia of Cancer, 3rd edn. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, p 2063. doi: 10.1007/978-3-642-16483-5_3388

    Google Scholar 

  • (2012) Methotrexate. In: Schwab M (ed) Encyclopedia of Cancer, 3rd edn. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, p 2274. doi: 10.1007/978-3-642-16483-5_3680

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Duxin Sun .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2015 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this entry

Cite this entry

Sun, D. (2015). Targeted Drug Delivery. In: Schwab, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Cancer. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-27841-9_5674-2

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-27841-9_5674-2

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-27841-9

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Biomedicine and Life SciencesReference Module Biomedical and Life Sciences

Publish with us

Policies and ethics