ABSTRACT
Email: ching632@gmail.com 2 Translational Medicine Research Center, First Clinical College, Nanjing University of Chinese
Medicine, Nanjing, 210023, China. Email: nzychb@163.com 3 Vascular Biology Program, Boston Children’s Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, United
States. * Corresponding author: peng0351@gmail.com
Decades of intensive research have been devoted to translate smart and advanced materials into cancer diagnosis and treatment under interdisciplinary collaborations between oncologists, clinicians, materials scientists and biomedical engineers. In recent years, smart materials, which have mostly nanoscale structures and features within a size range from few to hundreds nanometers and composed of polymeric or inorganic materials, have emerged as a novel therapeutic tool for cancer therapy. Compared with traditional biomedical materials, smart materials demonstrate the following unique advantages, including (i) improved drug delivery efficiency, (ii) prolonged circulation time, (iii) effective protection from biodegradation, (iv) controlled or sustained release of loaded cargo, and (v) passive or active tumor targeting function. Nanoparticulate-based therapeutic/diagnostic agents, also termed as nanomedicine, play a pivotal role among all smart materials in translational oncology applications. Nanomedicines have achieved remarkable clinical successes in cancer diagnosis and treatment. For instance, several nanomedicines have been approved by United States Food and Drug Administration (U.S. FDA) as either cancer therapeutics (e.g., Abraxane and Doxil (Barenholz 2012, Green 2006)) or cancer diagnostic agents (e.g., Feridex (Barnett et al. 2007)) for clinical cancer treatment, and more than 80 nanomedicines are under investigation in preclinical/clinical trials.
