Abstract
Doxorubicin, a member of the anthracycline family, is a common anticancer agent often used as a first line treatment for the wide spectrum of cancers. Doxorubicin-based chemotherapy, although effective, is associated with serious side effects, such as irreversible cardiotoxicity or nephrotoxicity. Those often life-threatening adverse risks, responsible for the elongation of the patients’ recuperation period and increasing medical expenses, have prompted the need for creating novel and safer drug delivery systems. Among many proposed concepts, polymeric nanocarriers are shown to be a promising approach, allowing for controlled and selective drug delivery, simultaneously enhancing its activity towards cancerous cells and reducing toxic effects on healthy tissues. This article is a chronological examination of the history of the work progress on polymeric nanostructures, designed as efficient doxorubicin nanocarriers, with the emphasis on the main achievements of 2010–2020. Numerous publications have been reviewed to provide an essential summation of the nanopolymer types and their essential properties, mechanisms towards efficient drug delivery, as well as active targeting stimuli-responsive strategies that are currently utilized in the doxorubicin transportation field.
Highlights
Since many aspects of these topics were thoroughly described in previous reviews, we focused on the latest trends in the doxorubicin delivery systems combined with increasingly innovative systems [47,48]
drug delivery systems (DDSs) can be sensitive to chemical and physical stimuli such as pH changes or light, as well as biological ones, e.g., enzymes overexpressed by cancer cells
New synthetic approaches and polymerization methods to create DDSs in a controlled manner with desired features in a relatively short time are a subject of intensive studies
Summary
Anthracyclines, including doxorubicin (DOX), daunorubicin, and epirubicin, are among the most active antitumor compounds with the widest spectrum of activity in human cancers such as carcinomas, sarcomas, and hematological malignancies. They are widely used (alone or in combination with other cytotoxic agents) in clinical practice for the treatment of lung, breast, ovarian, and urinary bladder cancers, as well as multiple myeloma, soft tissue sarcoma, osteosarcoma, leukemias, and Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Several combination regimens consisting of DOX a for treatment of breast cancer (DOX with cyclophosphamide and/or taxotere, DO cyclophosphamide and fluorouracil).
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