Applications of nanofibers drug delivery system in cancer therapy

Abstract

Cancer therapy has been widely associated with many challenges, including ineffective drug delivery. Recently, nanotechnology-enabled drug delivery system has demonstrated to be a superior approach for improving cancer therapy. Electrospun nanofibers loaded with anti-cancer drugs have shown tremendous cytotoxicity against a variety of tumor cells, including lung, breast, kidney, brain, bladder, prostate, colon, rectum, skin melanoma, blood (leukemia) and liver cancer cells. This smart drug delivery system has the ability to form networks of highly porous mesh and interconnectivity between their pore, enhancing their advanced drug delivery applications. They have minimum or no detrimental effects on other body parts in addition to the number of other benefits they offered such as multi-drug delivery, higher surface-to-volume ratio which ensures high encapsulation efficiency, good tunability and mechanical property, and ability to govern drug release kinetics. The versatility of nanofibrous drug delivery enables targeted delivery of variety of drugs, ranging from naturally derived Curcumin to laboratory-made Paclitaxel. The present review highlights important applications of nanofibers drug delivery in cancer therapy.