Nanomedicine for colon-targeted drug delivery: strategies focusing on inflammatory bowel disease and colon cancer
Creators: name: Kumar, Ankaj
name: Vaiphei, Klaudi K
name: Singh, Naveen
name: Chigurupati, Sri Pada Datta
name: Paliwal, Shivani Rai
name: Paliwal, Rishi
name: Gulbake, Arvind
Publisher: name: Taylor & Francis
Year: 2024
Subjects: subject: Biochemistry
subject: Space Science
subject: Medicine
subject: Genetics
subject: FOS: Biological sciences
subject: Molecular Biology
subject: Pharmacology
subject: Biotechnology
subject: Chemical Sciences not elsewhere classified
subject: Cancer
subject: Infectious Diseases
subject: FOS: Health sciences

description: The nanostructured drug-delivery systems for colon-targeted drug delivery are a promising field of research for localized diseases particularly influencing the colonic region, in other words, ulcerative colitis, Crohn's disease, and colorectal cancer. There are various drug-delivery approaches designed for effective colonic disease treatment, including stimulus-based formulations (enzyme-triggered systems, pH-sensitive systems) and magnetically driven drug-delivery systems. In addition, targeted drug delivery by means of overexpressed receptors also offers site specificity and reduces drug resistance. It also covers GI tract-triggered emulsifying systems, nontoxic plant-derived nanoformulations as advanced drug-delivery techniques as well as nanotechnology-based clinical trials toward colonic diseases. This review gives insight into advancements in colon-targeted drug delivery to meet site specificity or targeted drug-delivery requirements. Nanomedicine-based colon-targeted drug delivery (CTDD) has the potential to reduce side effects and dosing frequency, site-specific delivery, biocompatibility, and the translational possibility to prevent colonic diseases (ulcerative colitis, Crohn's disease and colorectal cancer). This review gives insight into advancements in drug-delivery systems to meet site-specificity or targeted drug-delivery requirements for colonic diseases. The physiological conditions of the gastrointestinal tract (pH, microbiota, mucus barrier and transit time) must be taken into consideration during the design of the CTDD system. The route of drug administration is also crucial as it decides the efficacy, selectivity, dosing frequency and stability of the formulations. Various approaches including stimulus-based systems (pH and enzyme-dependent), magnetically-driven systems, ligand-anchored nanosystems, self-nano emulsifying systems (SNEDDS), and edible-plant-derived nanosystems toward the effective treatment of colonic diseases were discussed. Several case studies on nanosystems such as liposomes, NLCs, SLNs, polymeric nano-/micro-particles along with conjugation to different ligands (folic acid, peptide, hyaluronic acid, transferrin, etc.,) demonstrated colon-targeted drug delivery in the colonic diseases. Nanofibers can be electro-spun from pH-responsive, enzyme-responsive, and other biomaterial for effective applications in colonic diseases. The importance of magnetic hyperthermia, SNEDDS, and edible-plant-derived nanosystems for the treatment of colonic diseases was highlighted. The clinical trials on colonic diseases, specifically colorectal cancer with respect to nanomedicine/nanotechnology were discussed. The clinical trials related to IBD are currently limited. A brief description of the limitations and possible measures to overcome the limitations were discussed. Nanomedicine for CTDD is a promising field of research for colonic diseases. This article summarizes key mechanisms and up-to-date methodologies adopted by the scientific fraternity as well as the clinical trials that are reported in the literature for developing CTDD. The utilization of nanomedicine for the treatment of colonic diseases is expected to undergo significant advancements in the coming time that not only improve pharmacokinetics but also provide selective drug exposure to the colon-specific region. The use of advanced preclinical models, i.e., organ-on-chip, genetically modified mouse models, orthotopic models, etc., to mimic human physiological conditions can translate future research into clinical outcomes. Computational pharmaceutics where the use of advanced <i>in silico</i> tools (design of experiment, mechanistic modeling, molecular dynamics, finite element analysis, and computational fluid dynamics) may help in reducing time along with minimization of the required resources to develop CTDD and may be explored in CTDD development.