In spite of the development of various anticancer drugs, the therapy of cancer has remained challenging for decades. The current therapy of cancer is overwhelmed because of the inability to deliver therapeutics to all regions of a tumor in effective therapeutic concentrations, intrinsic or acquired resistance to the treatment with currently available agents via genetic and epigenetic mechanisms, and toxicity. As a result, cancer therapy using conventional therapeutics and different types of treatment regimens using this therapeutics has not led to a convincing survival benefit of the patients. In this context, Macromolecular therapeutics offer several advantages over conventional low molecular therapeutics by various ways such as, enable the use of larger doses of these agents by limiting the toxicity, by enhanced permeability and retention into tumors, by tumor targeting using tumor-specific antibodies, by specific inhibition of oncogenes using anticancer oligonucleotides etc. Cancer treatment using this macromolecular therapeutics has considerably improved the survival benefit for patients. As a result, various macromolecular therapeutics are already commercialized or are under clinical development. Although we are far from a real magic bullet today, looking at the pace of research and current success in this field of macromolecular therapeutics, it appears that we are approaching a magic bullet for the efficient treatment of cancer. Thus, we believe that the subject of this book is very timely, and that the book will fill an unmet need in the market.
This book is unique and assembles various types and aspects of macromolecular anticancer therapeutics for cancer therapy in one shell and conveys the importance of this interdisciplinary field to the broad audience. Thus, in a nutshell, this book details the basics of cancer, and various therapeutic strategies such as those based on macromolecular therapeutics hence can become an important reference for practitioners, oncologists, medical pharmacologists, medicinal chemists, biomedical scientists, experimental pharmacologists, pharmaceutical technologists, and particularly it can essentially become a handbook of macromolecular therapeutics for cancer therapy for graduates, post-graduates and Ph.D. students in these fields.
The field of macromolecular therapeutics for cancer therapy is of considerable importance, as these therapeutic systems are gaining more and more interest to give new directions for the treatment of this dreadful disease. Macromolecular Anticancer Therapeutics, which describes in detail the macromolecular therapeutics for cancer therapy, covers the classification of these anticancer drugs based on therapeutic targets, and elaborates on different classes of anticancer therapeutics which are either in pre-clinic or in clinical phases or are already commercialized. This book also discusses various signal transduction pathways involved in the cancer growth and resistance to therapy, providing a clear insight into the molecular mechanistic aspects of this topic; it also describes the essential targets for efficient cancer therapy. In detail, this volume elaborates the different categories of macromolecular therapeutics of respectively natural and synthetic polymer and lipid origin, their chemistry, design and development, opportunities and challenges, current status, pre-clinic and clinical progresses. In addition, the design, development, and the challenges involved in future directions for cancer therapy using various categories of antibody-based therapeutics are elaborated in areas such as antibody-mediated drug targeting to cancer employing antibody-drug conjugates, radioimmunoconjugates, toxin-antibody conjugates, antibody-mediated enzyme pro-drug therapeutics, and also using antibodies alone to interfere with specific molecular targets responsible for tumor growth and progression. Besides the current status, pre-clinic and clinical progress of a variety of therapeutic anticancer oligonucleotides and siRNA designed and developed for specific inhibition of oncogenes are detailed. Furthermore, in this book, special attention is given to the treatment of breast cancer based on a comprehensive description about molecular mechanisms involved, hormone receptors implicated and molecular therapeutic interventions.
Macromolecular Anticancer Therapeutics details the current macromolecular therapeutic strategies, and should become an important reference for practitioners, oncologists, medical pharmacologists, medicinal chemists, biomedical scientists, experimental pharmacologists and pharmaceutical technologists. It is also a reference concerning macromolecular cancer therapy for graduates, post-graduates and Ph.D. students belonging to these fields.
