Abstract
Cancer is one of the biggest healthcare concerns in our century, a disease whose treatment has become even more difficult following reports of drug-resistant tumors. When this happens, chemotherapy treatments fail or decrease in efficiency, leading to catastrophic consequences to the patient. This discovery, along with the fact that drug resistance limits the efficacy of current treatments, has led to a new wave of discovery for new methods of treatment. The use of nanomedicine has been widely studied in current years as a way to effectively fight drug resistance in cancer. Research in the area of cancer nanotechnology over the past decades has led to tremendous advancement in the synthesis of tailored nanoparticles with targeting ligands that can successfully attach to chemotherapy-resistant cancer by preferentially accumulating within the tumor region through means of active and passive targeting. Consequently, these approaches can reduce the off-target accumulation of their payload and lead to reduced cytotoxicity and better targeting. This review explores some categories of nanocarriers that have been used in the treatment of drug-resistant cancers, including polymeric, viral, lipid-based, metal-based, carbon-based, and magnetic nanocarriers, opening the door for an exciting field of discovery that holds tremendous promise in the treatment of these tumors.
Highlights
Cancer comprises a conjunction of different diseases, which involve the uncontrollable growth of cells generating tumors
The results indicated that the obtained nanomedicine is biocompatible and able to target cancer cells
Over the past few decades, many cancers have been reported to show some variable degree of drug resistance to the usual treatments, a reality that is craving for new ways to treat these tumors
Summary
Cancer comprises a conjunction of different diseases, which involve the uncontrollable growth of cells generating tumors. Reports from the Ancient Greeks and Romans describe basic surgeries to remove breast tumors It was not until the 1940s when chemotherapy treatments were implemented, using drugs to reduce or eliminate cancer cells[3]. There is still not a definitive cure, and most treatments rely on chemotherapy combined with radiotherapy used to sensitize cancer cells. As some types of anti-cancer drugs are activated upon metabolic digestion, disturbance of this process leads to incomplete activation and acquisition of drug resistance[10]. Another mechanism of drug resistance is known as the alteration of drug targets. This was proven by Hermawan et al.[14], who found that continuous treatment with salinomycin induced drug resistance against salinomycin, while treatment sensitized drug-resistant cancer cells towards DOX
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