ABSTRACT
Cancer is an enormous health concern in the United States, resulting in almost 1.5 million cases and 550,000 deaths yearly. With only a few exceptions (such as testicular cancer and lymphomas), the denitive treatment of most solid tumors is surgical resection followed by adjuvant chemotherapy or radiation therapy to minimize the risk of recurrence. While some cancers are amenable to resection, other cancer types, such as cancers of the liver, are notoriously difcult to surgically remove. Reasons limiting resection include tumor size, involvement of more than one liver lobe, or a coexisting liver condition (e.g., cirrhosis) (Bentrem et al. 2005; Leung and Johnson 2001). In addition, the overall survival rates for these patients even after surgery are often low (Geller et al. 2006). The situation is even bleaker for cancers that have already spread by the time of their diagnosis. For example, out of 70,000 newly diagnosed colon cancer metastases to the liver in the United States per year, less than 10% of patients are actually eligible for surgery (Bentrem et al. 2005). Other abdominal cancers, such as those of the pancreas and stomach, also have low resection rates and poor overall patient survival, which have only marginally improved over the last
8.1 Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 221 8.2 Overview of Drug Delivery Goals ........................................................................................224
