Quantitative Evaluation of the Enhanced Permeability and Retention (EPR) Effect.

Quantitative evaluation of nanoparticle delivery to a tumor site can be invaluable for cross-platform comparison, a consideration not currently taken into account by many in the field of cancer nanomedicine (Dawidczyk et al., Front Chem 2:69, 2014). Standardization of measured parameters and experimental design will facilitate nanoparticle design and understanding in the field. Here, we present a broadly applicable in vivo protocol for preclinical trials of nanomedicines, including pharmacokinetic modeling and recommendations for parameters to be reported for nanoparticle evaluation. The proposed protocol is simple and not prohibitively mouse-heavy, using procedures that are not overly complicated or difficult to learn, yet is a powerful way to analyze the effectiveness of new cancer nanomedicines against standard or more developed ones.