Despite the great potential of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) in various areas of biomedicine, concerns regarding their carcinogenicity, inefficient dispersion in aqueous solutions and biological activity in vivo still remain. One important and feasible route to overcome these barriers is modification of CNTs with polymers, which are widely studied and play a vital role in biological and biomedical fields, especially in drug delivery. This comprehensive review focuses on the achievements of our and other groups in currently used methods to functionalize the surface of CNTs with polymers to produce anticancer drug delivery systems. We have intensively studied covalent and noncovalent interactions between CNTs and linear, dendritic and hyperbranched biocompatible polymers as well as biomacromolecules interactions which are very crucial to diminish the toxicity of CNTs via changing their conformations.

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Here, we report for the first time on a facile method for preparation of a novel drug delivery systems based on supramolecular interactions between β-cyclodextrin-polyglycerol conjugates (β-CD-g-PG) and human serum albumin (HSA). The results obtained by combined experimental/modeling studies showed that the main driving leading to the formation of HSA/β-CD-g-PG supramolecular entities are host-guest interactions between β-CD-g-PG and the aromatic side-chains of HSA residues. Due to these interactions, HSA undergoes a partial conformational transition, leading to a greater exposition of hydrophobic domains for hydrophobic drugs. Next, the binding affinity and loading capacity of the HSA/β-CD-g-PG supermolecular nanovector for doxorubicin (DOX) and paclitaxel (PTX) were investigated. Both drug/HSA binding constants (Kb,HSA/DOX = 3.24×103 M-1 and Kb,HSA/PTX = 5.65×101 M-1) sensibly increased in the presence of β-CD-g-PG (Kb, HSA/β-CD-g-PG/DOX = 2.78×104 M-1 and Kb,HSA/β-CD-g-PG/PTX = 2.82×102 M-1). In line, both protein drug loading increased about 20% upon HSA/β-CD-g-PG interaction (80% and 71% for DOX and PTX, respectively) with respect to the loading capacity of the bare HSA (60% and 50%). Due to the improved loading capacity with minimal changes in the structure of HSA, this system is a promising vector for future cancer therap

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