Title:Emerging Strategies in Stimuli-Responsive Nanocarriers as the Drug Delivery System for Enhanced Cancer Therapy
Volume: 25
Issue: 24
Author(s): Kandasamy Saravanakumar, Xiaowen Hu, Davoodbasha M. Ali and Myeong-Hyeon Wang*
Affiliation:
- Department of Medical Biotechnology, College of Biomedical Sciences, Kangwon National University, Chuncheon, Gangwon, 24341,Korea
Keywords:
Nanomedicine, stimuli-responsive nanocarriers, polymers, enzymes, ligands, cancer therapy.
Abstract: The conventional Drug Delivery System (DDS) has limitations such as leakage of the drug, toxicity to
normal cells and loss of drug efficiency, while the stimuli-responsive DDS is non-toxic to cells, avoiding the
leakage and degradation of the drug because of its targeted drug delivery to the pathological site. Thus nanomaterial
chemistry enables - the development of smart stimuli-responsive DDS over the conventional DDS. Stimuliresponsive
DDS ensures spatial or temporal, on-demand drug delivery to the targeted cancer cells. The DDS is
engineered by using the organic (synthetic polymers, liposomes, peptides, aptamer, micelles, dendrimers) and
inorganic (zinc oxide, gold, magnetic, quantum dots, metal oxides) materials. Principally, these nanocarriers
release the drug at the targeted cells in response to external and internal stimuli such as temperature, light, ultrasound
and magnetic field, pH value, redox potential (glutathione), and enzyme. The multi-stimuli responsive
DDS is more promising than the single stimuli-responsive DDS in cancer therapy, and it extensively increases
drug release and accumulation in the targeted cancer cells, resulting in better tumor cell ablation. In this regard, a
handful of multi-stimuli responsive DDS is in clinical trials for further approval. A comprehensive review is
crucial for addressing the existing knowledge about multi-stimuli responsive DDS, and hence, we summarized the
emerging strategies in tailored ligand functionalized stimuli-responsive nanocarriers as the DDS for cancer therapies.