TARGETING APPROACHES FOR BRAIN TUMOR: A COMPREHENSIVE REVIEW

Narendra Kumar* and Diptendu Goswami

ABSTRACT

The development of a drug delivery strategy that can not only cross the blood-brain barrier (BBB) rapidly, but also targets the glioma and reaches the core of glioma is essential and important for glioma treatment. Targeted drug delivery system is a unique approach for drug delivery to the appropriate site which is highly efficient, biocompatible, and non-immunogenic. The receptor-mediated endocytosis is one of the targets approaches especially for targeting anticancer drugs to cancerous sites. In brain cancer, cells have overexpressed receptors like folate, transferrin, low-density lipoprotein and hyaluronic acid receptors which can be used for effective site-specific drug delivery to cancerous cells using appropriate receptor-specific ligands. Active and passive targeting promotes tumor specificity with reduced possible side effects. Severalnanocarriers like liposomes, nanoparticles, micelles and dendrimers are used in the delivery of drugs to the target site. Thereis many transporters also involved in targeting. The targeted drug delivery system has numerous clinical and diagnostic applications. Modern approaches like ligand-mediated or stimuli-sensitive drug delivery systems have been used for the development of multifunctional nanocarriers that can effectively target cells and cellular organelles.

Keywords: Targeting; Ligand; Receptors; Cancer, Nanocarriers, Blood-brain barrier.