SMART POLYMERIC NANOPARTICLES FOR ANTI-CANCER DRUG DELIVERY
Li Yu
Key words: polymeric nanoparticles; endogenous stimuli-responsive drug delivery; exogenous stimuli-responsive drug delivery.
Abstract
The development of anti-cancer drugs, especially target-specific or stimuli-sensitive drugs that can identify tumor cells, to achieve the purpose of tumor treatment with no or very little impact on normal tissue cells, is the current focus of research. The smart or stimuli-responsive materials will be the good anti-cancer drug delivery carriers, because they can undergo significant changes in physical or chemical properties in response to the variations in the environment, which can expected to provide secure encapsulation of drugs in the absence of the stimuli, but release the drugs when the stimuli are presented. In this paper, we have reviewed various types of stimulus-responsive polymeric nanocarriers, including the endogenous stimuli (pH, redox and enzyme)-responsive drug delivery systems depend on the abnormal environments in diseased tissues to achieve specificity, and the exogenous stimuli (thermal, light, ultrasound and magnetic field)-responsive drug delivery system. We expect this review to be helpful for future development of novel nanomaterials such as two or more stimuli as anti-cancer drug carriers.