As lockdown becomes more and more the norm, I’ve been aware that Scientists are currently using any spare time that they may have at their disposal in suggesting, writing and completing any reviews they have on their “to do” list. At Drug Discovery Today we are more than happy to receive such wonderful, high quality work, but it is perhaps a double edged sword in that the rate of submission has put quite a strain on the system and having at least twice the number of submissions over what is a busy period for holidays has resulted in some articles taking a little longer to process than normal. I apologize if your articles are in this category, but I assure you that we will do everything we can to get your work completed to the same high standard as we believe it deserves with minimal delay. Anyway enough of the apologies and on to the main thrust of this newsletter, which is on some of the excellent articles we have published in the recent months on Cancer and Drug Delivery.
With respect to cancer, we have some very thought-provoking yet very diverse articles covering access to cancer drugs, new drugs for Multiple Myeloma and applications of nanomedicine to the treatment of the disease. The first article comes from Sharpe, Hoey, Yap and Workman entitled: From patent to patient: analyzing access to innovative cancer drugs. The authors suggest that cancers of high unmet clinical need are missing out on drugs seen for other tumours and that very few targeted drugs are coming through for paediatric cancers and it is taking too long to deliver any new drugs to patients. Secondly, the article by Alanazi, Kwa, Burchall and Jackson deals with “New Generation drugs for treatment of multiple myeloma. The authors point out that multiple myeloma treatment often involves combination therapies that can lead to thrombotic consequences and ask whether there Is there an effective way to ameliorate these risks to maximize treatment outcomes? Finally, in this section we present the article “Clinical applications of nanomedicine in cancer therapy” by Norouzi, Amerian, Amerian and Atyabi who highlight how cancer nanomedicine improves patient survival and clinical outcome while reducing systemic adverse effects of conventional treatments.
Following these excellent articles on access to, development and delivery of novel cancer drugs, we move to the equally important field of drug delivery and, to that end, we have included 3 other articles available for free download, the first of which comes from Raza, Sime, Cabot, Maqbool, Roberts and Falconer entitled: “Solid nanoparticles for oral antimicrobial drug delivery: a review” The authors review the various challenges associated with oral antimicrobial drug delivery and possible novel solutions and highlight how solid nanoparticles of antimicrobials for oral delivery have shown some promising results. Following on from this is “Improving the therapeutic efficiency of noncoding RNAs in cancers using targeted drug delivery systems” by Alzhrani, Alsaab, Petrovici, Bhise, Vanamala, Sau, Krinock and Iyer. The article deals with how drug delivery systems can be utilized to enhance the stability and efficiency of noncoding (nc)RNA, which has a potential role in cancer therapy. They discuss the ability of ncRNA to target tumor microenvironments via modification of a variety of delivery systems utilizing nanotechnology-based delivery approaches. To finish off the offerings from this newsletter, we have the article “Current potential and challenges in the advances of liquid crystalline nanoparticles as drug delivery systems” by Thiagarajan Madheswaran, Murugesh Kandasamy, Rajendran J C Bose and Vengadeshprabhu Karuppagounder. They highlight recent advances and challenges in the development and application of LCN, providing examples of their topical, oral, and intravenous drug delivery applications, and discussing translational obstacles to LCN as a nanoparticle technology
Steve Carney was born in Liverpool, England and studied Biochemistry at Liverpool University, obtaining a BSc.(Hons) and then read for a PhD on the Biochemistry and Pathology of Connective Tissue Diseases in Manchester University, in the Departments of Medical Biochemistry and Histopathology. On completion of his PhD he moved to the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology, London, where he worked with Professor Helen Muir FRS and Professor Tim Hardingham, on the biochemistry of experimental Osteoarthritis. He joined Eli Lilly and Co. and held a number of positions in Biology R&D, initially in the Connective Tissue Department, but latterly in the Neuroscience Department. He left Lilly to take up his present position as Managing Editor, Drug Discovery Today, at Elsevier. Currently, he also holds an honorary lectureship in Drug Discovery at the University of Surrey, UK. He has authored over 50 articles in peer-reviewed journals, written several book chapters and has held a number of patents.