Title:Bioactive Albumin-Based Carriers for Tumour Chemotherapy
VOLUME: 14 ISSUE: 8
Author(s):Yasser Shahzad, Ikram U. Khan, Talib Hussain, Alamgeer, Christophe A. Serra, Syed A.A. Rizvi, Minja Gerber and Jeanetta du Pless
Affiliation:Centre of Excellence for Pharmaceutical Sciences, North-West University, South Africa.
Keywords:Albumin, cancer, chemotherapy, drug delivery, microspheres, nanoparticles.
Abstract:Proteins are posed as the natural counterpart of the synthetic polymers for the development of drug delivery
systems and few of them, have been regarded safe for drug delivery purposes by the United States Food and Drug
Administration (FDA). Serum albumin is the most abundant protein in human blood. Interest in the exploration of
pharmaceutical applications of albumin-based drug delivery carriers, especially for the delivery of chemotherapeutic
agents, has increased in recent years. Albumin has several advantages over synthetic polymers, as it is biocompatible,
biodegradable, has low cytotoxicity and has an excellent binding capacity with various drugs. Micro- and nano-carriers
not only protect active pharmaceutical ingredients against degradation, but also offer a prolonged release of drugs in a
controlled fashion. Since existing tumour chemotherapeutic agents neither target tumour cells, nor are they specific to
tumour cells, a slow release of drugs from carriers would be beneficial in targeting carcinogenic cells intracellularly. This
article aims at providing an overview of pharmaceutical applications of albumin as a drug delivery carrier in tumour
chemotherapy.
