Mass Transport Via Cellular Barriers And Endocytosis

Mass transport within body compartments and across biological barriers negatively impacts drug delivery but also presents opportunities to optimally design drug carriers that benefit from novel differentials presented in pathological tissue. As an example, cancer presents unique alterations in vascular permeability, osmotic pressure, cellular zip-codes, and numerous other physical parameters that can be used to achieve preferential accumulation of imaging and therapeutic agents at the cancer lesion. This chapter describes the journey of drug delivery from the site of administration to the appropriate subcellular compartment within the target cell. Design parameters for optimal fabrication of nanoparticle-based carriers, including size, shape, elemental composition, surface staging, and hierarchical ordering of multi-particle complexes are presented. The overall objective of this chapter is to enhance our understanding of mass transport in order to facilitate the development of carriers for therapy and diagnostics of various pathological conditions.