Abstract
Although progress is observed in cancer treatment, this disease continues to be the second leading cause of death worldwide. The current understanding of cancer indicates that treating cancer should not be limited to killing cancer cells alone, but that the target is the complex tumor microenvironment (TME). The application of nanoparticle-based drug delivery systems (DDS) can not only target cancer cells and TME, but also simultaneously resolve the severe side effects of various cancer treatment approaches, leading to more effective, precise, and less invasive therapy. Nanoparticles based on proteins derived from silkworms’ cocoons (like silk fibroin and sericins) and silk proteins from spiders (spidroins) are intensively explored not only in the oncology field. This natural-derived material offer biocompatibility, biodegradability, and simplicity of preparation methods. The protein-based material can be tailored for size, stability, drug loading/release kinetics, and functionalized with targeting ligands. This review summarizes the current status of drug delivery systems’ development based on proteins derived from silk fibroin, sericins, and spidroins, which application is focused on systemic cancer treatment. The nanoparticles that deliver chemotherapeutics, nucleic acid-based therapeutics, natural-derived agents, therapeutic proteins or peptides, inorganic compounds, as well as photosensitive molecules, are introduced.
Highlights
There are many types of cancer treatments
We summarize the current status of development of drug delivery systems that are based on proteins derived from silkworms’ cocoons and spidroins which application is focused on systemic cancer treatment
Chemotherapy is often a first-line of the therapeutic approach for the treatment of a wide variety of cancers, as they are capable of combating cancer progression [43,44]
Summary
There are many types of cancer treatments. Depending on the type of cancer and how advanced it is, patients receive different treatments [1]. Properties, can encapsulate the significant quantity of active agents to increase their stability, biocompatibility, solubility in body fluids, and circulation time in an organism [7] Their use Nanoparticles in thedeal, Treatment of in Cancer offers a great especially anti-cancer therapies, where the toxicity and other properties of chemotherapeutic drugs raise a significant challenge. Drug carriers for systemic cancer and treatment have to overcome themust challenges of reachingexit the the blood circulationtumor at the site, accumulate in the TME, target (TME). Active tumor-targeting can be achieved by specific, ligand-mediated, cargo delivery to different types of objects: cancer cells or TME/TME-associated cells [18]
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