ABSTRACT
Maximizing the safety and efcacy of drug treatment is the key goal of pharmaceutical scientists and physicians. To this end, drug targeting is being actively pursued in several areas. Some of these approaches involve drug design toward molecular pathways relevant to the pathophysiology of the disease. In other cases, drug delivery systems are designed to transport the therapeutic moiety preferentially to the target organ, tissue, cell, and/or the intracellular disease target(s) after systemic administration. The delivery systems can also be designed for local delivery to the site of the disease to minimize systemic exposure and toxicity. In this book, we focus on the targeted drug delivery technologies that utilize both systemic and local routes of administration.
