Targeted drug delivery
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Scientists began to study targeted drug delivery, because the traditional drug delivery system had many disadvantages, such as high toxic effect and high minimum effective dose. In traditional drug delivery system, after the patient takes some drugs, the drugs will distributed throughout his body through the systemic blood circulation. Only a small amount of drugs can reach the affected organ which it needs to act on. Since many drugs have some toxicity, they can kill some helpful bacteria or normal cells in some normal organs.
The targeted drug delivery system can overcome these shortcomings and deliver the drugs right to the specific organ, without having any adverse effects on other healthy organs and tissues. Actually, the targeted drug delivery can be used to cure many diseases, such as the cardiovascular diseases and diabetes. However, the most important application of the targeted drug delivery is to treat the cancerous tumor.
There are two kinds of targeted drug delivery. The first one is active targeted drug delivery, such as some antibody drugs. The second one is passive targeted drug delivery, such as the Enhanced Permeability and Retention effect (EFR-effect).
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