Nanomedicine-enabled chemotherapy-based synergetic cancer treatments

Abstract

Chemotherapy remains one of the most prevailing regimens hitherto in the fight against cancer, but its development has been being suffering from various fatal side effects associated with the non-specific toxicity of common chemical drugs. Advances in biomedical application of nanomedicine have been providing alternative but promising approaches for cancer therapy, by leveraging its excellent intrinsic physicochemical properties to address these critical concerns. In particular, nanomedicine-enabled chemotherapy has been established as a safer and promising therapeutic modality, especially the recently proposed nanocatalytic medicine featuring the capabilities to generate toxic substances by initiating diverse catalytic reactions within the tumor without directly relying on highly toxic but non-selective chemotherapeutic agents. Of special note, under exogenous/endogenous stimulations, nanomedicine can serve as a versatile platform that allows additional therapeutic modalities (photothermal therapy (PTT), photodynamic therapy (PDT), chemodynamic therapy (CDT), etc.) to be seamlessly integrated with chemotherapy for efficacious synergistic treatments of tumors. Here, we comprehensively review and summarize the representative studies of multimodal synergistic cancer treatments derived from nanomedicine and nanocatalytic medicine-enabled chemotherapy in recent years, and their underlying mechanisms are also presented in detail. A number of existing challenges and further perspectives for nanomedicine-synergized chemotherapy for malignant solid tumor treatments are also highlighted for understanding this booming research area as comprehensively as possible. Graphical Abstract

Nanotechnology-Based Diagnostic and Therapeutic Strategies for Neuroblastoma

“…However, curative effects of these chemotherapeutic agents tended to be severely compromised due to their rapid clearance and non-specific distribution, which leads to unavoidable systemic toxicity. In addition, multidrug resistance is another major cause of chemotherapy failure ( Wu et al, 2022 ). Currently, nanomaterial-based approaches have been proposed in combination with chemotherapy aim to enhance the efficacy of conventional chemotherapy regimens through multiple strategies.…”

Nanomedicine for Treating Muscle Dystrophies: Opportunities, Challenges, and Future Perspectives

“…Nanomedicine facilitates the loading of a range of active payloads, including growth factors [ 18 ], oligonucleotides [ 10 ], cytokines [ 11 ], and, essentially, chemotherapeutics [ 19 ]. The surface modification of cargo-loaded nanoparticles by targeting ligands/moieties can further improve their uptake by the tumor cells overexpressing specific receptors in an in vivo environment [ 20 ].…”

Sustained and Long-Term Release of Doxorubicin from PLGA Nanoparticles for Eliciting Anti-Tumor Immune Responses

“…In spite of the key role of chemotherapeutics as potent inducers of ICD, their use has been severely limited for several reasons, such as poor pharmacokinetics (PK), high toxicity, and off-target effects [ 11 ]. Nanotechnology-based drug delivery systems (Nano-DDS) have been developed to overcome these traditional issues of cytotoxic drugs, and have enabled the prolonged circulation and increased tumor accumulation of drugs, and simultaneously reduced treatment-related toxicity [ 12 , 13 , 14 ]. Despite these promising signs, there still remain a few hurdles to be surmounted in nanomedicine, for example low delivery efficiency (<1%), heterogeneity of drug accumulation, and inadequate toxicokinetics causing side effects and immune adverse effects [ 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 ].…”