The Use of Anthracyclines for Therapy of CNS Tumors

Author(s):

Martina da Ros, Anna Lisa Iorio, Maurizio Lucchesi, Alessia Stival, Maurizio de Martino and Iacopo Sardi   Pages 721 - 727 ( 7 )

Abstract:

Despite being long lived, anthracyclines remain the “evergreen” drugs in clinical practice of oncology, showing a potent effect in inhibiting cell growth in many types of tumors, including brain neoplasms. Unfortunately, they suffer from a poor penetration into the brain when intravenously administered due to multidrug resistance mechanism, which hampers their delivery across the blood brain barrier.

In this paper, we summarize the current literature on the role of anthracyclines in cancer therapy and highlight recent efforts on 1) development of tumor cell resistance to anthracyclines and 2) the new approaches to brain drug delivery across the blood brain barrier.

Keywords:

Anthracyclines, blood brain barrier, brain diseases, drug delivery systems, drug efflux proteins, multidrug resistance.

Affiliation:

, , , , , Neuro-Oncology Unit, Department of Paediatric Medicine, Meyer Children's Hospital. Viale G. Pieraccini 24, 50139 Florence, Italy.

Graphical Abstract:

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