Nanocarrier Based Anticancer Drug Delivery System: Current Trends and Prospects

Abstract

Nanotechnology is a growing research field dealing with the creation and manipulation of materials at a nanometer scale for the better treatment, diagnosis and imaging of diseases. The expansion of novel nanocarriers for drug delivery is an exciting and challenging research filed, in particular for the delivery of emerging cancer therapy. Over the years, cancer targeting treatment has been greatly improved by new tools and approaches based on this nanotechnology. The use of nanocarriers has improved the bioavailability, in vivo stability, intestinal absorption, solubility, sustained and targeted delivery of several anticancer agents. Nanocarriers are much promising in cancer therapy by selectively gaining access to tumor due to their small size and modifiability. This review provides a brief overview of the general principle of drug targeting to cancer and variety of carriers employed for targeted drug delivery used in cancer therapy and summarizes advantages and disadvantages of each approach. Particularly, the attention was paid to liposomes, micelles, nanoshells, nanowires, fullerene, dendrimers, gold nanoparticles and paramagnetic nanoparticles, quantum dots, solid lipid nanoparticles, polymeric nanocarriers and carbon nanotubes.