Discovery of specific ligands for oral squamous carcinoma to develop anti-cancer drug loaded precise targeting nanotherapeutics.

Oral squamous cell carcinoma has a low five-year survival rate, which may be due to late detection and a lack of effective tumor-specific therapies. Using a high throughput drug discovery strategy termed one-bead one-compound combinatorial library, the authors identified six compounds with high binding affinity to different human oral squamous cell carcinoma cell lines but not to normal cells. Current work is under way to develop these ligands to oral squamous cell carcinoma specific imaging probes or therapeutic agents.