Delivery of molecular and cellular medicine to solid tumors

Barriers to drug delivery in solid tumors

Over the last decade, significant progress has been made in the field of drug delivery. The advent of engineered nanoparticles has allowed us to circumvent the initial limitations to drug delivery such as pharmacokinetics and solubility. However, in spite of significant advances to tumor targeting, an effective treatment strategy for malignant tumors still remains elusive. Tumors possess distin...

Application of personalized medicine to solid tumors: opportunities and challenges.

Personalised medicine is an emerging model that will revolutionise our current healthcare system. In the last decade, several genomic aberrations were discovered that are now used as predictive markers for treatment with targeted therapeutics. The technological advances in the last few years, such as the development of high resolution DNA microarrays or second generation sequencers, have led to...

Optimizing liposomes for delivery of chemotherapeutic agents to solid tumors.

Molecular and cytogenetic analysis of solid tumors

In this lecture two-part lecture we will focus on the importance of cytogenetics and molecular biology in understanding the causation of solid tumors and on how this information is being developed for the clinical laboratory. We will review the recurrent rearrangements in some of the pediatric neoplasms and relate the observed changes to the molecular biology that underlies these cancers. The r...

PLGA Nanoparticles for Ultrasound-Mediated Gene Delivery to Solid Tumors

This paper focuses on novel approaches in the field of nanotechnology-based carriers utilizing ultrasound stimuli as a means to spatially target gene delivery in vivo, using nanoparticles made with either poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) or other polymers. We specifically discuss the potential for gene delivery by particles that are echogenic (amenable to destruction by ultrasound) composed...