Liposomes for Enhanced Cellular Uptake of Anticancer Agents

Abstract

Cancers are life threatening diseases and their traditional treatment strategies have numerous limitations which include poor pharmacokinetic profiles, non-specific drug distribution in the body tissues and organs and deprived tumor cells penetration. This attracted the attention of researchers to tailor efficient drug delivery system for anticancer agents to overcome these limitations. Liposomes are one of the newly developed delivery systems for anticancer agents. They are vesicular structures, which were fabricated to enhance drug targeting to tumor tissues either via active or passive targeting. They can be tailored to penetrate tumor cells membrane which is considered the main rate limiting step in antineoplastic therapy. This resulted in enhancing drug cellular uptake and internalization and increasing drug cytotoxic effect. These modifications were achieved via various approaches which included the use of cell-penetrating peptides, the use of lipid substances that can increase liposome fusogenic properties or increase the cell membrane permeability toward amphiphilic drugs, surface modification or ligand targeted liposomes and immuno-liposomes. The modified liposomes were able to enhance anticancer agent's cellular uptake and this was reflected in their ability to destroy tumor tissues. This review outlines different approaches employed for liposomes modification for enhancing anticancer agent's cellular uptake.

Keywords: Liposomes; anticancer; cell-penetrating peptides; cellular uptake; fusogenic liposomes; immuno-liposomes.