Cancer represents one of the world’s most devastating diseases. Current
cancer treatments include surgical intervention, radiation and chemotherapeutic drugs,
which often also kill healthy cells and cause toxicity to the patients. Tumor specific
drug delivery has become increasingly interesting in cancer therapy, as the use of
chemotherapeutics is often limited due to severe side effects. Conventional drug
delivery systems have shown low efficiency and a continuous search for more advanced
drug delivery principles is therefore of great importance. Liposomes as pharmaceutical
drug carriers were developed to increase antitumour efficacy and decrease drug toxicity.
As a biodegradable and essentially nontoxic platform, liposomes can be used to
encapsulate both hydrophilic and hydrophobic active principles and be utilised as drug
carriers in drug delivery systems. The objective of this chapter is to discuss some
clinical application of liposomes as drug delivery systems in the treatment of
carcinomas (cancers of the epithelial cells).
Keywords: Antitumor activity, breast cancer, carcinomas, chemotherapy,
cholesterol, colorectal cancer, drug targeting, epithelial cells, glandular cells,
kidney cancer, liposomes, liver cancer, lung cancer, phosphatidylcholine,
phospholipids, prostate cancer, risk factors, squamous cells, toxicity, transitional
cells.
