Investigating the Effect of Aging on the Pharmacokinetics and Tumor Delivery of Nanomaterials using Mathematical Modeling.

The application of nanomedicine for diagnosis and treatment of cancer has immense potential, but has witnessed only limited clinical success, in part due to insufficient understanding of the role of nanomaterial properties and physiological variables in governing nanoparticle (NP) pharmacology. Here, we present a multiscale mathematical model to examine the effects of physiological changes associated with patient age on the pharmacokinetics and tumor delivery efficiency of NPs. We show that physiological changes due to aging prolong the residence of NPs in the systemic circulation, thereby improving passive accumulation of NPs in tumors.Clinical Relevance - Understanding the effect of inter-individual variability on the pharmacological behavior of nanomaterials will improve their clinical translatability.