Cancer Nanomedicine: A New Era of Successful Targeted Therapy

Cancer is considered as one of the most challenging health care problems. Though there are many approved drugs that can be used for cancer therapy, drug resistance and delivery are among of the barriers of the treatment. In addition, pathological characteristics of tumors and their abnormal blood vessel architecture and function also reduce the efficiency of the conventional cancer treatment. Therefore, looking for techniques that can increase the efficacy of the therapy such as nanoparticles (NPs) is vital. NPs have many properties such as their small size, ability to load various drugs and large surface area, and ability to increase the absorption of conjugated. Therefore, the NPs have been considered as excellent tumor-targeting vehicles. The recent nanoscale vehicles include liposomes, polymeric nanoparticles, magnetic nanoparticles, dendrimers, and nanoshells; lipid-based NPs have been used as conjugates. There are few examples of approved conjugated anticancer NPs including AmBisome® (amphotericin B liposomal) and Doxil® (liposomal doxorubicin). There are many other conjugated anticancer drugs at different stages of clinical trials for treatment of various cancers. This review will discuss the properties of different NPs in cancer treatment and their benefits of overcoming multidrug resistance. In addition, recent advances of using nanomedicine in different approaches of cancer treatment such as chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and immunotherapy will be highlighted in this review.