Highlights of the Annual Meeting of the Italian Association for Cell Cultures (AICC): new drug delivery strategies and technological platforms for diagnosis and therapy of tumors. Part II. 6 - 7 December 2007, Naples, Italy.

In recent decades considerable advances have been achieved in the development of new strategies based on the specific delivery of drugs into tumor tissues through the use of bio-materials and nanoparticles. The AICC meeting was divided into different sessions addressing different issues. The first section was about new delivery systems for either drugs or DNA. In detail, the pharmacokinetics and pharmaco-distribution of different carrier systems were explained. Thereafter, the possibility of drug delivery with pegylated liposomes or with nanoparticles or micelles was analyzed. The crossing of the blood-brain barrier by pegylated liposomes in order to deliver antitumor drugs to brain tumor sites was also explored.