Under the supervision of the Dean of the College of Pharmacy, Professor Dr. Sarmed H. Kathem Alkhateeb, the continuous learning Unit at the University of Baghdad/College of Pharmacy held an in-person workshop entitled “Advances in Drug Targeting Approaches for Cancer Therapy,” delivered by Assistant Lecturer Yasser Falih Muhsin, a faculty member at the Pharmaceutical chemistry Department.
The workshop aimed to highlight recent advances in drug delivery and targeting strategies for cancer therapy, focusing on their major benefits and limitations in enhancing drug delivery to tumor cells while minimizing its effects on healthy tissues. The workshop also addressed key modern drug delivery systems, including nanoparticles, liposomes, exosomes, and dendrimers, as well as drug delivery strategies associated with immunotherapy, gene therapy, and phototherapy, and their potential role in enhancing therapeutic responses and overcoming treatment resistance.
The workshop included several topics, beginning with conventional approaches to the delivery of anticancer drugs and their major benefits, along with the main challenges associated with these approaches, particularly their limited selectivity toward tumor cells, potential damage to healthy tissues, and the occurrence of unwanted effects and interactions. The workshop also reviewed advanced tumor-targeted drug delivery systems and their design and application in delivering various therapeutic agents, with a focus on their role in improving treatment efficiency and enhancing therapeutic effects.
The workshop concluded that advances in drug delivery technologies represent an important approach to improving cancer therapy by enhancing tumor targeting, prolonging drug circulation time in the bloodstream, achieving more controlled and sustained drug release, and enhancing intracellular drug uptake. Some delivery systems can also be designed to respond to specific characteristics of the tumor microenvironment, such as variations in pH and the presence of specific enzymes, thereby enabling more selective drug release, improving therapeutic efficacy, and helping to overcome cancer treatment resistance.
