Basha Mona
Pharmaceutical Technology Department, National Research Centre, Cairo 12622, Egypt.
Curr Drug Deliv. 2018;15(4):497-509. doi: 10.2174/1567201814666170516114411.
Cancer was and still a very stressful and urgent disease condition representing a leading cause of death in developed as well as developing countries. Although, much research work in both medical and pharmaceutical fields has evolved in the past few years in addition to some promising clinical trials and few market products, cancer becomes much wilder, threatening and getting more lives. Most approaches have focused on the synthesis of new active ingredients or chemical modification of available ones, formulating them in suitable dosage forms aiming for targeted and effective drug delivery with minimal side effects.
Recently, application of nanotechnology through formulation of nanocarriers has acquired much more attention in treating different types of cancer tumors. Being explored in cancer therapy, nanocarriers have shown a promising capability to enhance intracellular uptake of active agents, promoting their accumulation in the tumor mass in addition to the reduction of the cellular toxicity compared to conventional chemotherapeutics.
In view of the above findings, this review discusses recent advances in nanotechnology-based carriers for cancer drug delivery, providing detailed description of different nanocarriers from historical perspective since the first developed carrier up to the new strategies adopted to formulate novel multifunctional targeted nanocarriers for cancer therapy.
The findings of this review illustrate the potential of nanotechnology-based carriers as an emerging technology for more satisfying and selective cancer therapy.
癌症过去是且现在仍然是一种极具压力且紧迫的疾病状况，是发达国家和发展中国家主要的死亡原因之一。尽管在过去几年里，医学和制药领域开展了大量研究工作，还有一些很有前景的临床试验以及少数上市产品，但癌症却愈发猖獗，威胁着越来越多的生命。大多数方法都集中在合成新的活性成分或对现有成分进行化学修饰，将它们制成合适的剂型，以实现靶向且有效的药物递送，并使副作用最小化。
最近，通过制备纳米载体应用纳米技术在治疗不同类型的癌症肿瘤方面受到了更多关注。在癌症治疗中进行探索时，纳米载体已显示出有前景的能力，即与传统化疗药物相比，能增强活性药物的细胞内摄取，促进其在肿瘤组织中的蓄积，同时降低细胞毒性。
鉴于上述发现，本综述讨论了基于纳米技术的癌症药物递送载体的最新进展，并从历史角度详细描述了不同的纳米载体，从首个开发的载体一直到为癌症治疗制备新型多功能靶向纳米载体所采用的新策略。
本综述的研究结果表明，基于纳米技术的载体作为一种新兴技术，在实现更令人满意且更具选择性的癌症治疗方面具有潜力。
