Enhanced Permeability and Retention (EPR) Effect for Anticancer Nanomedicine Drug Targeting

Effective cancer therapy remains one of the most challenging tasks to the scientific community, with little advancement on overall cancer survival landscape during the last two decades. A major limitation inherent to most conventional anticancer chemotherapeutic agents is their lack of tumor selectivity. One way to achieve selective drug targeting to solid tumors is to exploit abnormalities of tumor vasculature, namely hypervascularization, aberrant vascular architecture, extensive production of vascular permeability factors stimulating extravasation within tumor tissues, and lack of lymphatic drainage. Due to their large size, nano-sized macromolecular anticancer drugs administered intravenously (i.v.) escape…