Recent Progress and Advances in Stimuli-Responsive Polymers for Cancer Therapy

Abstract

The conventional chemotherapeutic agents, used for cancer chemotherapy, have major limitations including non-specificity, ubiquitous biodistribution, low concentration in tumor tissue, and systemic toxicity. In recent years, owing to their unique features, polymeric nanoparticles have been widely used for the target-specific delivery of drugs in the body. Although polymeric nanoparticles have addressed a number of important issues, the bioavailability of drugs at the disease site, and especially upon cellular internalization, remains a challenge. A polymer nanocarrier system with a stimuli-responsive property (e.g., pH, temperature, or redox potential), for example, would be amenable to address the intracellular delivery barriers by taking advantage of pH, temperature, or redox potentials. With a greater understanding of the difference between normal and pathological tissues, there is a highly promising role of stimuli-responsive nanocarriers for drug delivery in the future. In this review, we highlighted the recent advances in different types of stimuli-responsive polymers for drug delivery.

Frontiers of Medical Micro/Nanorobotics: in vivo Applications and Commercialization Perspectives Toward Clinical Uses

“…In general, this direction has been the motivation for in vivo applications (Erkoc et al, 2018 ). Thus, targeted delivery has benefited by recent in vitro developments in micro/nanorobotic chemotaxis (Peng et al, 2015 ; Shao et al, 2017 ) and material research using stimuli triggered drug release (Genchi et al, 2017 ; Rao et al, 2018 ). For example, magnetically guided nanorobots were used toward the delivery of fluorouracil medication for reducing tumor growth in a mice model.…”

Biomolecules Turn Self-Assembling Amphiphilic Block Co-polymer Platforms Into Biomimetic Interfaces

“…As the ability to respond to environmental conditions is crucial for many biomedical applications, considerable efforts have been directed to the development of “smart” polymer nanoassemblies that respond to stimuli (physical, such as pH, temperature, light, magnetic field, or chemical, as for example the presence of specific molecules). Stimuli-sensitive polymersomes have emerged as delivery systems where the release of the encapsulated contents can be modulated by the stimulus (Alsuraifi et al, 2018; Kalhapure and Renukuntla, 2018; Rao et al, 2018; Wang et al, 2018a). Conceivably, stimuli-responsive release may result in significantly enhanced therapeutic efficacy and minimized side effects in clinical applications (Alsuraifi et al, 2018; Yang et al, 2018).…”

“…By now, several polymeric micelles are in clinical trials, predominantly in cancer therapy, with the aim to achieve better patient outcome based on the advantages offered by block copolymers (Thakor and Gambhir, 2013; Kim et al, 2014; Kim H. J. et al, 2016; Nishiyama et al, 2016; Mukai et al, 2017; Park et al, 2017; Rao et al, 2018).…”

Hyaluronic Acid Nanoparticles as Nanomedicine for Treatment of Inflammatory Diseases

“…Use of microenvironment-responsive PNPs has emerged as a promising strategy for diagnostic and therapeutic delivery over the last decade [ 5 , 6 ]. These PNPs can be triggered by endogenous stimuli in the diseased tissues, such as pH [ 7 ], enzymes [ 8 ], cellular traction forces [ 9 ], reactive oxygen species (ROS) [ 10 , 11 ], or glutathione [ 12 ]. Ideally, they may exhibit prolonged circulation in the bloodstream and accumulate at the target site to show diagnostic or therapeutic effects.…”