Drug Targeting Organ-Specific Strategies Edited by Grietje Molema ...

Preface
Drug Targeting Organ-Specific Strategies. Edited by G. Molema, D. K. F. Meijer
Copyright © 2001 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH
ISBNs: 3-527-29989-0 (Hardcover); 3-527-60006-X (Electronic)
It is our prime intention to cover the topics of this series as comprehensively as possible.
Thus, we are very pleased to introduce this volume focussing on organ specific strategies of
drug targeting.
About hundred years ago Paul Ehrlich put forward his theory of “the magic bullet” as an
approach to tame disease. Scientists have ever since worked on the principle of drug targeting
based on this idea of specifically delivering drugs to diseased cells. Especially nowadays
that by high-throughput screening and molecular modelling techniques highly potent drugs
are being developed that interfere with general (signal transduction) processes in cells in the
body, the need for their application by a drug targeting approach has almost become inevitable.
Progress in the field of drug targeting has been slow till thirty years ago. With the advent
of the monoclonal antibody technology in the mid seventies of the last century as well as the
development of liposomal devices as carriers did the drug targeting field expand and did the
clinical application become a feasible aim.
Monoclonal antibodies, liposomes, polymers, proteins, and many other entities have ever
since seen the light as carrier molecules. And, as with most technological developments, they
have all encountered a vast array of difficulties, ranging from problems in the synthesis of the
carriers and drug conjugates to unfavorable pharmacokinetics and toxicity. Furthermore,
lack of knowledge on the anatomical and physiological barriers in the body hampered application.
However, many problems have been solved, not in the least due to the advent of recombinant
DNA technology to construct better defined carriers that can be produced in
large amounts, and advanced pharmaceutical formulation technology. Similarly, the rapid developments
in molecular biology, cell biology and immunology led to a better understanding
of the processes taking place in vivo upon administration of carriers and conjugates. Important
conclusion is that drug targeting has become a multidisciplinary research area.
What has been achieved until now? In the year 2001, several liposome and antibody based
strategies have been or will soon be approved for clinical application, some for the treatment
of cancer, some for the treatment of bacterial infections, some for chronic inflammatory diseases.
Furthermore many monoclonal antibodies without a drug or pharmacologically active
molecule attached are in the clinic. Their intrinsic targeting and effector function is obviously
sufficient for the pharmacological effect.
Only a few polymer or protein based drug targeting strategies have reached the clinic and
an important question in the coming years will be whether these strategies eventually will
reach it.All will depend on their effectiveness and improved toxicity profiles as compared to
free drug only and the ease of their production at large scale.
The present volume is in several respects unique. It provides a map of the body from the
viewpoint of drug targeting/drug delivery. Potentials and limitations of targeting strategies