Pharmaceutica Analytica Acta

Potential application of carbon nanotubes for cancer targeting therapy

5^th International Conference and Exhibition on Pharmaceutics & Novel Drug Delivery Systems

March 16-18, 2015 Crowne Plaza, Dubai, UAE

Rahul Pratap Singh, Madaswamy S Muthu and B L Pandey

Posters & Accepted Abstracts: Pharm Anal Acta

Abstract:

Since last decades, carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are frequently used as a potential nanomaterial in several fields including biological, chemical, and electrical field. But recently, CNTs are used in biomedical field as a potential drug carrier due to its unique mechanical, electronic and thermal properties. Many research studies showed, it can be used as a successful targeting carrier in several live threatening diseases such as cancer. Presently, cancer is a major cause of death in all across the world. In every year several million patients are dying due to cancer. From the literature, currently CNTs are most approaching cancer targeting drug carriers in several cancer treatment including lung, liver, and brain cancer therapy. CNTs are self playing as diagnostic role during therapy. It was found that as a targetting drug carrier, CNTs have various extraordinary features including, the ability of targeting moieties at specific locations in the body, the ability of reducing the quantity of drug that needs to be delivered to attain a therapeutic concentration level for the treatment of disease, and the ability of decreasing the concentration of the drug at non-target sites which makes them potential drug carriers. Additionally, CNTs have emerged as fascinating materials, exhibiting promising potential in receptor based targeting owing to their unique physicochemical properties (cell membrane penetration, high surface area and drug payload, biocompatibility, easy surface modification, photoluminescence property, and non-immunogenicity etc). Several imaging modalities are used for the in-vitro and in-vivo diagnostic estimation. Various biomolecules have been easily tethered to CNTs surfaces including proteins and amino acid, enzymes, nucleic acid (DNA and siRNA), aptamers, vitamins, monoclonal antibodies, peptides (NGR, RGD and Aniopep-2) and so on, for targeting purposes. After the attachment of these agents to the CNTs, it can prospectively target cancer cells and treat them very easily.