Nanoparticle-Mediated Cancer Chemotherapy

There are certain limitations of cancer chemotherapy including lack of specificity for tumour, drug resistance, limited aqueous solubility, short half-life, and poor chemical stability. The special properties of nanoparticles (sizes ranging from 1 to 100 nm), such as their biocompatibility, decreased toxicity, enhanced permeability, enhanced stability, precision targeting, and retention effect, make them useful for treating cancer. Functionalised nanocarriers have many advantages, including their passive targeting capacity through enhanced permeation and retention (EPR), large surface-to-volume ratio, ability to load a variety of drugs, and tunable surface for targeting modification, and they have been the best choice for implementing combination therapy. Of all the drug delivery systems (DDSs), lipid-based platforms such as nanoliposomes provide a sizable portion of the approved nanopharmaceuticals for the treatment of cancer. Currently, lipid-based nanoformulations make up 56% of them, with protein- and metal-based nanoformulations accounting for the remaining 38% and 6%, respectively.