Alina Porfire

By Alina Porfire, Marcela Achim, Lucia Tefas and Bianca Sylvester

The liposomes present great potential for applications in targeted delivery of chemotherapeutics in the treatment of cancer. The use of liposomal drug carriers as vehicles for targeting of chemotherapeutic agents to tumor tissues is based on their advantages over other dosage forms, represented by their low systemic toxicity, their bioavailability, and their possibility to enhance the solubility of different chemotherapeutic agents, due to the ability to encapsulate both hydrophilic and lipophilic drugs. They enhance the therapeutic index of anticancer drugs by increasing the drug concentration in tumor cells through tumor targeting. The available approaches used for tumor targeting using liposomes are passive targeting, active targeting, and triggered drug release. The most advanced targeting strategies proposed for cancer treatment are the development of multifunctional liposomes, having combined targeting mechanism. In this chapter, the tumor-targeting mechanisms are described in detail as well as the possibilities to design the targeted liposomal nanocarrier in order to reach the desired target in the body and minimizing the off-target effects. Moreover, the current status of preclinical and clinical evaluation is highlighted.

Part of the book: Liposomes

By Ioan Tomuta, Alina Porfire, Tibor Casian and Alexandru Gavan

Vibrational spectroscopy, namely near infrared (NIR) and Raman spectroscopy, is based on the interaction between the electromagnetic radiation and matter. The technique is sensitive to chemical and physical properties and delivers a wide range of information about the analyzed sample, but in order to extract the information, multivariate calibration of the spectral data is required. The main goal of this work will be to present in detail the available multivariate calibration strategy for development of NIR and Raman spectroscopic methods, which was successfully applied in pharmaceutics.

Part of the book: Calibration and Validation of Analytical Methods

By Alina Porfire, Marcela Achim, Cristina Barbalata, Iulia Rus, Ioan Tomuta and Cecilia Cristea

Quality by Design (QbD) is a systematic, risk-based approach to pharmaceutical product and manufacturing development, which uses quality-improving scientific methods upstream in the research, development, and design phases, in order to assure that quality and safety are designed into product at as early stage as possible. This work focuses on the state-of-the-art applications of the QbD principles in the development of liposomes. The QbD approach has recently been proposed as a useful tool to obtain higher-quality liposomal products, as their development is a challenging task, involving intricate formulation and manufacturing processes. Thus, the current strategies to define the relationship between the critical material attributes or process parameters and product critical quality attributes and to establish the design space are overviewed. Additionally, the current characterization methodologies are described, as part of the control strategy required within the QbD paradigm.

Part of the book: Liposomes