Synthetic routes to nanomaterials containing anthracyclines: noncovalent systems
Chemotherapy still constitutes a basic treatment for various types of cancer. Anthracyclines are effective antineoplastic drugs that are widely used in clinical practice. Unfortunately, they are characterized by high systemic toxicity and lack of tumour selectivity. A promising way to enhance treatment effectiveness and reduce toxicity is the synthesis of systems containing anthracyclines either in the form of complexes for the encapsulation of active drugs or their covalent conjugates with inert carriers. In this respect nanotechnology offers an extensive spectrum of possible solutions. In this review, we discuss recent advances in the development of anthracycline prodrugs based on nanocarriers such as copolymers, lipids, DNA, and inorganic systems. The review focuses on the chemical architecture of the noncovalent nanocarrier–drug systems.
The novel contribution of this paper relies in the proposal of a fully implicit numerical method designed for nonlinear degenerate parabolic equations, in its convergence/stability analysis, and in the study of the related computational cost. In fact, due to the nonlinear nature of the underlying mathematical model, the use of a fixed point scheme is required and every step implies the solution of large, locally structured, linear systems. A special effort is devoted to the spectral analysis of the relevant matrices and to the design of appropriate iterative or multi-iterative solvers, with special attention to preconditioned Krylov methods and to multigrid procedures: in particular we investigate the mutual benefit of combining in various ways suitable preconditioners with V-cycle algorithms. Numerical experiments in one and two spatial dimensions for the validation of our multi-facet analysis complement this contribution.