Functionally Oriented Tumor Microenvironment Responsive Polymeric Nanoassembly: Engineering and Applications

Abstract

The excellent drug encapsulation, prolonged in vivo circulation time, enhanced pharmacokinetics, and reduced adverse effects make the polymeric assemblies ideal carriers in nanomedicine, and become an emerging research field with rapid development. In vivo, the polymer nanoassemblies will experience five steps, including circulation in the blood, accumulation in the tumoral site, penetration into the deep tumor tissue to reach cancer cells, internalization into cancer cells, and intracellular drug release. However, although tremendous efforts have been made to the material design, currently available carriers still have difficulties in fulfilling all of the requirements. Moreover, the long-standing dilemma of the synchronized stability and permeability of vesicles is still a big challenge, which confused researchers for a long time. This feature article focuses on the recent progress of single- or multi-stimuli triggered theranostic platforms, and the extracellularly reengineered shell-sheddable polymeric nanocarriers are systematically discussed. The perspectives for future developments in the nanocarriers functioned with artificial helical polymers (the potential cell-penetrating peptides mimics) are also proposed. We speculate that this feature article can fit the interesting of diverse readers and a guideline for the design of next generation of drug nanocarriers.