ABSTRACT
Chemotherapy is widely utilized and has proven an effective treatment method for all forms of cancer. However, its conventional approach shows many limitations, including poor pharmaceutical properties of drugs, higher off-target cytotoxicity, and multidrug resistance (MDR) against the therapy, making conventional chemotherapy a less preferable treatment option. Many potent drugs have lost their value due to these limitations and, were ignored for a long time in cancer chemotherapy. Drug delivery systems propose a promising way to overcome almost all the limitations associated with conventional chemotherapy. Nanotechnology as a therapeutic transport mechanism for cancer therapy has received a lot of interest in recent years. Nanoparticle-based drug delivery approach begins with the encapsulation or attachment of the chemotherapeutic drugs within/on the nanocarrier, followed by their successful delivery to the target site to achieve numerous advantages, including protection, stabilization, and sustained release of drug molecules. These offered benefits provide a chance to re-think the possible drugs before being ignored because of their toxicity and poor pharmacokinetics. The first 228successful liposome nanoparticle-based formulation, “Doxil” was permitted by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for cancer management in 1995. Since then, the field has developed exponentially and drawn the interest of a variety of investigators. Currently, several nanoparticle-based cancer chemotherapy drugs have been licensed, although many are at different levels of clinical or pre-clinical growth.
