Advanced drug delivery systems in oral cancer

Oral malignancy is one of the most prevalent oral diseases. It stands as the 6th common disease of the world with high mortality rate. It accounts for 4% of all the cancers. It was estimated that around 200,000 patients were diagnosed with oral cancer every year. Of this, 90%–95% of the malignancy is oral squamous cell carcinoma. Head and neck have a complex anatomy where treating the malignancy is a challenge for the physician. Management of oral malignancies includes radiotherapy, chemotherapy, surgery, or combinations of any of them. Surgical management results in huge disfigurement and functional deformities while radio and chemotherapy cause generalized toxicity in the body. Chemotherapy is the most preferred form of combination therapy as well as supportive therapy. However, the destruction of normal cells could not be avoided. Though the advent of newer targeted therapies had overcome this adverse effect to some extent, drug delivery to the oral cancer cells precisely to the tumor alone is a task. This chapter gives an overview on the numerous available modalities of the drug delivery system to the oral cancer.