Polymeric Nano Medicine for Cancer Therapy-Review

Most anti-cancer drugs are based on a differential killing of cancer cells. Development of cancer therapy has largely been driven by the assumption that if we screen enough drugs we will find drugs with a mechanism of action which allows a greater discrimination between normal cells and cancer cells. From a biochemical (or pharmacological) point of view there is very little difference between normal and cancer cells, i.e. pharmacological specificity of anticancer agents is very low for most cancers. So the drug delivery systems should try to exploit the differences between cancer and normal cells because of differences in accessibility - physiological/anatomical factors. In the past few decades, considerable attention has been focused on the development of novel drug delivery system (NDDS) for anticancer drugs. Currently developed delivery systems for anticancer agents include colloidal systems (liposomes, emulsions, nanoparticles and micelles), polymer implants and polymer conjugates. This review focuses on the development of polymer nanomedicines, its pre-clinical and clinical investigations and the future perspectives.