Department of Clinical Pharmacy, College of Pharmacy, King Saud University, Riyadh, 11451, Saudi Arabia.
Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, College of Pharmacy, Jazan University, Jazan, 45142, Saudi Arabia.
Semin Cancer Biol. 2022 Nov;86(Pt 2):886-908. doi: 10.1016/j.semcancer.2022.02.006. Epub 2022 Feb 7.
Cancer is one of the biggest causes of mortality in the world. The advances in cancer research have taken us to distance in understanding the disease, which helps develop therapeutic strategies. Surgery and chemotherapy are the two main chosen routes of combat for cancer. These chemotherapeutic agents are good at targeting cancer, but many lack the specificity to make the distinction between healthy cells. Also, the toxicity of these chemotherapeutic agents is very high. This gap makes it quintessential to either look for better and safe agents or makes it possible for existing agents to meet these needs. Nanotechnology has the potential to deal with these unmet needs. Nanotechnology has been a hot topic recently due to its applications, one of these being nanomedicine. Studies have proven that cancer nanomedicine has a scope of being revolutionary. With the help of nanoparticles, we can make drugs specific for the cancer tissue; it can also help in increasing the bioavailability of the drug. A nanoparticle can be modified as such that it can carry the drug load that is required and deliver it to the specific target. In this review article, we have discussed the advances in nanomedicine and the current clinical status of various nanomedicines. We have extensively explored various strategies used to develop cancer nanomedicine while also discussing their mechanism of action.
癌症是世界上最大的死亡原因之一。癌症研究的进展使我们能够更深入地了解这种疾病，从而帮助开发治疗策略。手术和化疗是对抗癌症的两种主要选择途径。这些化疗药物善于靶向癌症，但许多药物缺乏区分健康细胞的特异性。此外，这些化疗药物的毒性非常高。这种差距使得寻找更好、更安全的药物或使现有药物能够满足这些需求变得至关重要。纳米技术有潜力解决这些未满足的需求。由于纳米技术的应用，纳米技术最近成为一个热门话题，其中之一就是纳米医学。研究已经证明，癌症纳米医学具有革命性的前景。借助纳米粒子，我们可以使药物专门针对癌症组织；它还可以帮助提高药物的生物利用度。纳米粒子可以被修饰为携带所需的药物负载，并将其递送到特定的靶标。在这篇综述文章中，我们讨论了纳米医学的进展以及各种纳米药物的当前临床状况。我们广泛探讨了开发癌症纳米医学所使用的各种策略，同时也讨论了它们的作用机制。
