Ligand-based targeted therapy: a novel strategy for hepatocellular carcinoma

Abstract

Min Li,1 Weiyue Zhang,2 Birong Wang,3 Yang Gao,1 Zifang Song,1 Qi Chang Zheng1 1Department of Hepatobiliary Surgery, Union Hospital, 2The First Clinic Institute, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, 3Department of Breast and Thyroid Surgery, Puai Hospital, Wuhan, The People’s Republic of China Abstract: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the most common primary liver cancer with high morbidity and mortality worldwide. Chemotherapy is recommended to patients with intermediate or advanced stage cancer. However, the conventional chemotherapy yields low desired response rates due to multidrug resistance, fast clearance rate, nonspecific delivery, severe side effects, low drug concentration in cancer cells, and so on. Nanoparticle-mediated targeted drug delivery system can surmount the aforementioned obstacles through enhanced permeability and retention effect and active targeting as a novel approach of therapeutics for HCC in recent years. The active targeting is triggered by ligands on the delivery system, which recognize with and internalize into hepatoma cells with high specificity and efficiency. This review focuses on the latest targeted delivery systems for HCC and summarizes the ligands that can enhance the capacity of active targeting, to provide some insight into future research in nanomedicine for HCC. Keywords: targeted therapy, hepatocellular carcinoma, ligand, drug delivery system, nanoparticle

Keywords

• targeted therapy
• hepatocellular carcinoma
• ligand
• drug delivery system
• nanoparticle