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Nounou. J Cancer Metastasis Treat 2018;4:29 Journal of Cancer
DOI: 10.20517/2394-4722.2018.18 Metastasis and Treatment

Editorial Open Access

Bioconjugate structures vs. composite
nanoparticulate carriers: the battle for the future of

smart, effective and safe cancer management

Mohamed Ismail Nounou

Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, School of Pharmacy, University of Saint Joseph, Hartford, CT 06103, USA.
Correspondence to: Dr. Mohamed Ismail Nounou, Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, School of Pharmacy, University of
Saint Joseph, Hartford, CT 06103, USA. E-mail: nounou@usj.edu
How to cite this article: Nounou MI. Bioconjugate structures vs. composite nanoparticulate carriers: the battle for the future of
smart, effective and safe cancer management. J Cancer Metastasis Treat 2018;4:29.
http://dx.doi.org/10.20517/2394-4722.2018.18

Received: 2 Feb 2018 First Decision: 23 Apr 2018 Revised: 25 Apr 2018 Accepted: 6 Jun 2018 Published: 21 Jun 2018
Science Editor: Lucio Miele Copy Editor: Jun-Yao Li Production Editor: Cai-Hong Wang

For the past couple of decades, academic research has been mainly focusing on novel carrier systems and
nanoparticulate colloidal technologies for drug delivery, such as nanoparticles, nanospheres, vesicular
systems, liposomes, nanocapsules, etc. Such efforts aided in the creation of newly marketed products such as
Doxil® in the market . Such systems provide the tools to customize a superior drug delivery system, impart
[1,2]
novel functions to old drugs such as longer half-life and stealth properties (as in the case of Doxil®), and
provide them with either passive or active targeting properties via grafting the carrier system with targeting
moieties and/or imaging agents or another drug within the same carrier system . Such technologies opened
[3]
the gate towards more sophisticated and effective multi-acting platform(s) which can offer site-targeting,
imaging, and treatment using a single multi-functional system . Unfortunately, such technologies are faced
[4]
with major problems including low stability profile, short shelf-life, and poor reproducibility across and
within production batches leading to harsh bench-to-bedside transformation. The commercial scale-up
processes of composite nanoparticulate carriers are challenging, time-consuming and costly. Such scale-up
processes from the bench to pilot small-scale production, and subsequently to the full-scale process involve
significant major pre-formulation and formulation developmental steps along with the design of rugged and
robust in vitro characterization techniques to ensure safety and efficacy of the final formulation along with
quantitative determination of intra/inter-batch variability to comply with pharmacopeial standards and
regulations. Additionally, the majority of such novel therapeutic systems’ inactive adjuvants and reagents
used in the pre-formulation and formulation steps are not yet approved by the FDA and not listed in their
approved inactive ingredient database (IID).

© The Author(s) 2018. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
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sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, for any purpose, even commercially, as long
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