The Daniel K. Inouye College of Pharmacy Scripts: Targeted Nanocarrier Based Systems for the Treatment of Lung Cancer.

In Hawai'i, lung cancer is among the top cancers diagnosed and a leading cause of death. Despite current understanding and modern surgery, radiology, and chemotherapy techniques, the survival of those suffering from lung cancer remains low. Current anticancer drugs have poor tumor tissue selectivity and toxicity issues that contribute to their overall low efficacy, detrimental effects to normal tissues, and drug resistance. A potential way of mitigating cancer is through RNA interference (RNAi) by the delivery of small interfering RNA (siRNA) to target select proteins or genes involved in cancer progression, known as oncoproteins or oncogenes, respectively. However, the clinical utility of delivering unformulated siRNA has been hindered due to poor cell penetration, nonspecific effects, rapid degradation, and short half-life. As an alternate for conventional chemotherapy, nanoparticles (AKA nanocarriers) may be designed to localize within the tumor environment and increase targeted cell internalization, thus reducing systemic adverse effects and increasing efficacy. Nanoparticles play important roles in drug delivery and have been widely studied for cancer therapy and diagnostics, termed collectively as theranostics. Nanoparticles composed of natural and artificial polymers, proteins, lipids, metals, and carbon-based materials have been developed for the delivery of siRNA. Cancer targeting has been improved by nanoparticle surface modification or conjugation with biomolecules that are attracted to or stimulate therapeutic agent release within cancer tissues or cells. In this mini-review article, we present recent progress in nanocarrier-mediated siRNA delivery systems that include lipid, polymer, metallic and carbon-based nanoparticles for lung cancer therapy.