Prospective Bacterial Minicells for Drug Delivery Systems

Abstract

Drug delivery system (DDS) is an important challenge in medicine over the conventional drug delivery system in case of therapeutic efficacy. In recent years, due to the shortcomings of conventional chemotherapy such as poor bioavailability, low treatment index, and unclear side effects, the focus of drug development and research has shifted to new nanocarriers of chemotherapeutic drugs. By using biodegradable materials, nanocarriers generally have the advantages of good biocompatibility, low side effects, specific target, controlled release profile, and improved efficacy. There are many kinds of DDS such as lyposome, vesicle, peptide, gene, microchip, polysaccharide and so on being studied nowadays. Each DDS has the advantages and disadvantage. However, the materials made them are expensive and the preparation techniques sometimes are complicated. Moreover, those DDS are rarely shown the ability in drug delivery to target. In the study, nano sized bacterial minicells were showed to clarify the importance of this material in drug delivery and target therapy.