Biomaterial-Based Particulate Drug Carriers - Harnessing Biomaterials in Nanomedicine: Preparation, Toxicity, and Applications - page 16

1.4 Conclusions and Future Prospects

The needs for carrier-mediated drug therapy, in particular for
targeted biomaterial-based particulate systems, have been discussed
throughout this chapter, as were the advantages and drawbacks.
The road to achieving biomaterial-based targeted particulate
drug carriers has been and still is long and difficult. Of the vast
amount of investigated systems, only relatively few have reached the
clinic to become established treatment modalities. Yet, as discussed
throughout this chapter, such systems are acutely needed, and the
potential advantages clearly outweigh the drawbacks.
Future prospects of getting more systems to the clinic hinge on
several factors that should be addressed from the very beginning.
First and foremost, building the carrier-drug system should be driven
by the pathology and the drugs for which the carrier formulation is
developed. Those, in turn, will drive the selection of administration
route, targeting agent, and particle specifications (raw materials,
structure, size range). Setting those initial parameters does not
guarantee successful development all the way to the clinic. Each
drug-carrier formulation will be required to go through all the
steps of pre-clinical and clinical studies. We contend, however,
that “starting right” as defined above will be a substantial positive
contribution toward successful therapy with targeted, biomaterial-
based particulate drug carriers.

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