Delivery of Locally-Acting Agents to Intracellular Targets

Most of conventional pharmaceuticals permeate into tissues and cells in a non-specific way and are randomly distributed in the body regardless of their real requirements. It leads to side effects which can limit the use of drug forcing to decrease the treatment doses. In addition, many of potential pharmaceuticals cannot be used due to poor cell penetration, because their charge or high molecular weight makes it impossible for them to penetrate the biological membranes. As one of the consequences of it, subcellular drug delivery is a rapidly growing area of research in the medical and pharmaceutical field. Many biologically active agents can be transported into a given cell compartment in order to reveal its activity or to achieve higher activity. There are cytotoxic agents, like photosensitizers, radionuclides emitting short-range particles, DNA-injuring substances, etc., which are able to damage biomolecules in many cellular compartments but there exist(s) specific compartment(s) where their effects are maximal or, in other words, their half-maximal effective concentrations (EC50’s) are minimal. Nevertheless, despite of considerable progress in development of subcellular delivery approaches, many types of biologically active molecules, potential pharmacological agents, are on the waiting list. Special interest attracts approaches to make macromolecules, like antibodies, cell-penetrable and capable to specifically interact with subcellular target molecules of choice within the target cells. All the above agents could be named as locally-acting ones, because their actions/interactions are limited to specific subcellular compartments; they also might need special delivering vehicles and can be employed for cell-specific impact.
The main goal of this Research Topic is to highlight the current state of delivery vehicles for locally-acting drugs into target compartments of particular cells.
Original Research articles and Reviews will be preferred. Themes cover:
1. Highlighting innovative locally-acting drug development and delivery;
2. Development of new cell-specific vehicles for locally-acting drug;
3. Evaluating new drug delivery systems efficacy and safety.
4. Characteristics of intracellular transport processes of the delivery vehicles.
5. Biodistribution of systemically administered vehicles for subcellularly targeted locally-acting agents.