Cancer is considered as one of the most severe health problems and is currently the third most common cause of death in the world after heart and
infectious diseases. Novel
therapies are constantly being discovered, developed and trialed. Many of the current
anticancer agents exhibit non-ideal
pharmaceutical and pharmacological properties and are distributed non-specifically throughout the body. This results in death of the both normal healthy and malignant cells and substantially leads to accruing a variety of serious toxic side effects. Therefore, the efficient systemic
therapy of
cancer is almost impossible due to harmful side effects of
anticancer agents to the healthy organs and tissues. Furthermore, several problems such as low bioavailability of the drugs, low
drug concentrations at the site of action, lack of
drug specificity and drug-resistance also cause many restrictions on clinical applications of these drugs in the
tumor therapy. Different types of the liposomal formulations have been used in medicine due to their distinctive advantages associated with their structural flexibility in the encapsulation of various agents with different physicochemical properties. They can also mediate delivery of the cargo to the appropriate cell type and subcellular compartment, reducing the effective dosage and possible side effects which are related to high systemic concentrations. Therefore, these novel systems were found very promising and encouraging
dosage forms for the treatment of different types of
cancer by increasing efficiency and reducing the systemic toxicity due to the specific
drug delivery and targeting.