Carbon nanotubes: A review on synthesis and drug delivery for cancer treatment

Abstract

Despite the amazing advances in medical technology, cancer continues to be one of the leading causes of mortality and conventional therapeutic approaches frequently fall short of providing an effective cure. Nano biotechnology has recently achieved enormous advancements in cancer treatment, with enormous application potential due to their capacity to provide exact and regulated medication release, increase drug solubility and decrease unwanted effects. Among the most attractive carbon-related nanomaterials is carbon nanotube (CNT), which already has achieved considerable success in the field of biomedicine. CNTs can be used in various manners for the treatment and diagnosis of cancer because of their superior optical property, thermal conductivity and electronic conductivity and their ease of functionalisation and high drug-loading capacity. Several methods for cancer treatment used CNT as drug delivery system, such as CNT drug delivery, CNT drug delivery enhanced phototherapy, CNTs for immunotherapy and tumour microenvironment responsive drug release. All these systems link the drug with CNTs through an appropriate function group by using covalent or noncovalent functionalisation of CNT. The best result for cancer treatment was obtained by CNT drug delivery enhanced phototherapy because its effect related to the increase the temperature or the ROS enhanced due to subjected of CNTs to the light and the effect of drug released in the malignant cell. In this review, a summary of the most current developments in CNT-based medication delivery for theranostics in cancer is provided.