Nanocarrier in Cancer Therapy: An Overview

Cancer is considered a highly notorious disease. Cancer treatment at advanced stages is often challenging. Chemotherapy often leaves a long-lasting impact on the health of a cancer patient even after successful treatment of cancer. Most of these therapeutic methods used in the treatment of cancer incur many side effects due to non-specific targeting of drugs. Often, larger doses are administered than required due to loss of drug molecules before reaching its targets. Also, the frequency of administration is often higher due to low bioavailability. Use of specially designed nanocarriers can provide a promising solution to all above problems. This chapter provides a basic and fundamental overview of important nanocarriers which are being used or have potential to be used in targeted delivery of anti-cancerous drugs, have high drug loading and encapsulation efficiency, reduced loss before reaching targets and enhanced bioavailability thereby reducing drug side effects and sufferings.