Drug delivery systems: Entering the mainstream

Drug delivery systems (DDS) such as lipid- or polymer-based nanoparticles can be designed to improve the pharmacological and therapeutic properties of drugs administered parenterally. Many of the early problems that hindered the clinical applications of particulate DDS have been overcome, with several DDS formulations of anticancer and antifungal drugs now approved for clinical use. Furthermore, there is considerable interest in exploiting the advantages of DDS for in vivo delivery of new drugs derived from proteomics or genomics research and for their use in ligand-targeted therapeutics.