ABSTRACT
Paclitaxel is one of the best antineoplastic drugs found from nature in the past
decades, which has excellent therapeutic effects against a wide spectrum of
cancers including ovarian cancer, breast cancer, colon cancer, small and non-
small cell lung cancer, neck cancer and AIDS related Kaposi’s sarcoma [1-3]. Like
many other anticancer agents, paclitaxel has problems in formulation due to its
extremely low solubility. Its current clinical dosage form, Taxol R©, is formulated in an adjuvant called Cremophor EL, which has been found to be responsible
for many serious side effects of Taxol R© including hypersensitivity reactions, nephrotoxicity, cardiotoxicity and neurotoxicity [4-6]. Research has thus been
concentrated on developing alternative dosage forms devoid of Cremophor
EL, which include liposomes, micelles, paste and polymeric microspheres and
nanoparticles. Among them, nanoparticles of biodegradable polymers may have
advantages to solve the formulation problem of paclitaxel as well as to realize a
controlled and sustained way for paclitaxel delivery [7, 8].
