Renal Cell-Targeted Drug Delivery Strategy for Acute Kidney Injury and Chronic Kidney Disease: A Mini-Review

• Published in: Molecular pharmaceutics 2021-09, Vol.18 (9), p.3206-3222
• Main Authors: Liu, Di, Du, Yan, Jin, Fei-Yang, Xu, Xiao-Ling, Du, Yong-Zhong
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Acute Kidney Injury - drug therapy; Acute Kidney Injury - pathology; Animals; Disease Models, Animal; Drug Delivery Systems - methods; Humans; Kidney Glomerulus - drug effects; Kidney Glomerulus - metabolism; Kidney Glomerulus - pathology; Mice; Renal Insufficiency, Chronic - drug therapy; Renal Insufficiency, Chronic - pathology; Tissue Distribution
• ISSN: 1543-8384; 1543-8392
• DOI: 10.1021/acs.molpharmaceut.1c00511

Kidney diseases, including acute kidney injury (AKI) and chronic kidney disease (CKD), have become a global public health concern associated with high morbidity, mortality, and healthcare costs. However, at present, very few effective and specific drug therapies are available, owing to the poor therapeutic efficacy and systemic side effects. Kidney-targeted drug delivery, as a potential strategy for solving these problems, has received great attention in the fields of AKI and CKD in recent years. Here, we review the literature on renal targeted, more specifically, renal cell-targeted formulations of AKI and CKD that offered biodistribution data. First, we provide a broad overview of the unique structural characteristics and injured cells of acute and chronic injured kidneys. We then separately summarize literature examples of renal targeted formulations according to the difference of target cells and elaborate on the appropriate formulation design criteria for AKI and CKD. Finally, we propose a hypothetic strategy to improve the renal accumulation of glomerular cell-targeted formulation by escaping the uptake of the reticuloendothelial system and provide some perspectives for future studies.