Nanoparticles as Delivery Systems in Cancer Therapy: Focus on Gold Nanoparticles and Drugs

Conventional cancer chemotherapy presents several bottlenecks, such as lack of specificity that impacts healthy tissues, rapid drug metabolism, and both intrinsic/acquired drug resistances varying in patient status, which altogether lead to reduction of efficacy. To overcome these issues and improve efficacy, combination with novel nanotechnology approaches-cancer nanomedicine-in the areas of imaging, diagnosis, and drug delivery are being proposed. These developments have been focused upon the preparation and application of nanoparticles for cancer therapy. Gold nanoparticle (AuNP) applications have been projected for improved imaging, diagnosis, and therapy, due to their exquisite physicochemical and optical properties showing potential applications as drug/gene carriers, photothermal and contrast agents. All these features may potentiate selective drug delivery, thus improving efficacy and reducing side effects. In this chapter, we shall discuss applications of nanoparticles with focus on AuNPs as efficient targeted (drug) delivery systems in cancer therapy.