Recent advances in nanotechnology and nanobiotechnology have contributed to the development of nanomaterials, able to be used as drug carriers, probes, targets or cytostatic drugs by itself. Nanomedicine is now the leading area in nanotechnology where a large number and types of nanoparticles (NPs) has been developed and several are already in the clinical practice. Chemotherapy is one of the most widely used strategies to treat cancer. Most chemotherapeutic agents have poor solubility, low bioavailability, and are formulated with toxic solvents. NPs have been designed to overcome the lack of specificity of chemotherapeutic agents as well to improve circulation time in blood, taking advantages on tumor cells characteristics. In immunology, recent advances regarding the activation of the innate immune system artificially enhanced by NPs functionalized with immune-stimulators open a new window as novel methods in vaccines. Also, viruses and virus-like particles (VLPs) engineered to stimulate immune response against their similar virus or as molecular platforms for the presentation of foreign epitopes have been described. In this review we focused in the use of different types of NPs in oncology and immunology, pinpointing the main novelties regarding their development and use of nanotechnology in a broad array of applications, ranging from tumor diagnostics, immune-modulation up to cancer therapeutics.
Lung cancer is the biggest oncologic problem for global health, as it is the most deadly and prevalent pathology after skin cancer. Two million patients are diagnosed every year, and around 80% of them die due to the disease. Radiotherapy has been practiced for decades to treat these patients, but recently, there has been important advances on this treatment on early stages (I and II), as stereotactic radiation therapy is becoming crucial. There has also been an increase on the importance of this treatment on more advanced stages (III), since intensity-modulated radiation therapy has achieved the reduction of undesirable side effects. The performance of stereotactic radiation at metastasis stages on patients with oligometastasis has accomplished great results. Likewise, hypofractionated treatments on polymetastatic patients have increased their quality of life.
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