Chapter 16 - Redox-responsive nanomedicine for breast cancer therapy

Abstract

Breast cancer cells are a nonuniform heterogeneous population of tumor cells within the breast with a high mortality rate. The breast cancer relapse rate is also very high, even after complete treatment. Targeting specific sites of breast cancer cells is very important to attain radical cures in breast cancer therapy. Even the approachability of targeting agents for breast cancer cells does not offer a complete treatment via chemotherapy. This may be due to restricted applications, off-target effect, poor water solubility, low bioavailability, and the development of drug resistance in breast cancer cells. Stimuli-responsive nanocarriers serve various benefits to overcome the delivery of anticancer agents specifically to their target sites. Among the different stimuli-responsive nanocarriers, redox-responsive nanocarriers offer the ultimate mechanism of responses at high intracellular microenvironment levels of glutathione and disulfide bonds which tend to cleave in reductive surroundings. This redox-responsiveness is responsible for the rapid release of the loaded cargoes, which differs from normal cell conditions. These nanocarrier assemblies have shown their usefulness in tumor xenograft animal models, with enhanced tumor targeting and tumor growth regression. This chapter summarizes the various prospects of the synthesis, design, and application of different kinds of redox-sensitive nanocarriers, for example, liposomes, micellar systems, polymeric nanoparticles, and nanogels, for the treatment of breast cancer.