Multifunctional micelle delivery system for overcoming multidrug resistance of doxorubicin.

Doxorubicin (DOX), as an anthracycline, plays an important role in chemotherapy. But multidrug resistance (MDR) tremendously retards the anticancer effect of DOX and results in the failure of chemotherapy. Multifunctional micelles emerge as a valid strategy to load DOX by physical encapsulation or chemical binding to be delivered to cancer cells against MDR. In this review, mechanism of MDR of DOX is simply described. Multifunctional co-delivery micelles of DOX and main MDR modulators have been summarised in detail. DOX-loaded multifunctional polymeric micelles are also introduced to alleviate MDR of DOX, in which polymers act as MDR modulators.