Does nanomedicine have a delivery problem?

Cancer drugs don’t discriminate. They kill all cells, not just the cancerous ones. So drugmakers often look for ways to minimize how much of a chemotherapy drug ends up in healthy tissue while still delivering sustained high levels to tumors.

Nanomedicine offers one possible way to thread this therapeutic needle. Loading nanoparticles with drug molecules can help the compounds stay in the blood longer and accumulate in tumors instead of in healthy tissue.

But a recent review paper questions how effectively current nanoparticles target drugs to tumors.