论文部分内容阅读
Sub-cellular, i.e.organelle-specific drug delivery is emerging as the new frontier in drug delivery.It has become more and more evident that the efficiency and efficacy of drug action depends largely on how well an unaided drug molecule is able to reach its intracellular target or even its target inside organelles such as mitochondria.Subsequently, the specific delivery of a drug to its site of action inside cells will dramatically improve its action.Mitochondria play a key role in apoptosis and several clinically used as well as experimental drugs are known to trigger apoptosis by directly interacting with target site at or inside mitochondria.Therefore we hypothesized that that the mitochondria-targeted delivery of such drugs will dramatically increase their pro-apoptotic activity.We have been developing during the last years a variety of mitochondria-specific pharmaceutical nanocarriers for the purpose of delivering therapeutic DNA or low-molecular weight compounds to mitochondria inside living mammalian cells.Here we will summarize our efforts and introduce new data demonstrating the applicability of our mitochondria-targeted nanocarriers for increasing the apoptotic activity of several drugs, in particular paclitaxel and ceramide.