TY - JOUR A2 - Cui, Daxiang AU - Riggio, Cristina AU - Pagni, Eleonora AU - Raffa, Vittoria AU - Cuschieri, Alfred PY - 2011 DA - 2011/10/10 TI - Nano-Oncology: Clinical Application for Cancer Therapy and Future Perspectives SP - 164506 VL - 2011 AB - Nano-oncology, the application of Nanomedicine to cancer diagnosis and treatment, has the potential to transform clinical oncology by enhancing the efficacy of cancer chemotherapy for a wide spectrum of invasive cancers. It achieves this by enabling novel drug delivery systems which target the tumour site with several functional molecules, including tumour-specific ligands, antibodies, cytotoxic agents, and imaging probes simultaneously thereby improving tumour response rates in addition to significant reduction of the systemic toxicity associated with current chemotherapy regimens. For this reason, nano-oncology is attracting considerable scientific interest and a growing investment by the global pharmaceutical industry. Several therapeutic nano-carriers have been approved for clinical use and others are undergoing phase II and III clinical trials. This paper describes the current approved formulations, such as liposomes and polymeric nanoparticles, and discusses the overall present status of nano-oncology as an emerging branch of nanomedicine and its future perspectives in cancer and therapy. SN - 1687-4110 UR - https://doi.org/10.1155/2011/164506 DO - 10.1155/2011/164506 JF - Journal of Nanomaterials PB - Hindawi Publishing Corporation KW - ER -