Metal-Based Prodrugs and Nanoparticles in Cancer Therapy

Dear Colleagues,

In recent decades, the use of prodrugs and nanoparticles as drug delivery systems offers the possibility of developing sophisticated targeting therapeutics as powerful nanomedicine tools, enabling for biomedical applications in prevention, diagnosis, treatment of cancer disease, radiomics and theranostics. Transition metal complexes have been used in medicine to treat cancer for more than 40 years but many concerns are responsible for the current stall in the field of metal anticancer drugs. Nowadays, one of the strategies is to convert them into inert prodrugs, so that they can travel to the tumour site unchanged and release the drug in its active form only there. Moreover, the development of novel nanodrug delivery systems have been attracting growing interests as allow to improve pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic properties and show more therapeutic efficacy and less potential toxicity. In addition to nanostructures for delivering of known chemotherapeutic agents, the inclusion/combination of metal complex in/and nano-system may also be a reliable approach and the future for cancer therapy.

The present Special Issue of Pharmaceutics welcomes contributions dealing with all aspects of metallo-prodrugs and nanotechnology in drug delivery research, including

• synthetic methods for the realization of novel metallo-prodrugs, nanosystems and/or metallodrug in nanoparticles
• analysis of pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic properties of metal-based prodrugs, chemotherapeutics or metal drugs encapsulated in nanostructures
• in vitro or in vivo evaluation of therapeutic properties of metal-based prodrugs, nanoparticles and nanostructured materials functionalized with therapeutic metal complexes.
• Use of metal-pro drugs or/and nanoparticles in diagnosis, medical imaging, therapy and theranostics as well

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Guest Editors

Prof. Dr. Barbara Tomasello
Dr. Irina Naletova
Dr. Victor V. Pleshkan
Guest Editors

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