Design and Limitations of Tumor Microenvironment-Responsive Nanocarriers for Targeted Drug Delivery

Abstract

Cancer is still a major cause of death worldwide, and the old ways of treating cancer have defects, such as systemic toxicity, quick drug resistance, and poor targeting. Given the favorable features of the tumour microenvironment, conventional therapy has shown limited efficacy, thus, new nanocarrier-based drug delivery systems are needed. This review will introduce the necessary biological and physical characteristics of the tumour microenvironment and present current responsive nanoparticle platforms, such as lipid-based, polymer-based, inorganic, biological, and hybrid systems, associated with their construction patterns, therapeutic effects, and preclinical progress. Preclinical data show that these nanocarriers improve tumour accumulation and realise controlled, localised drug release. However, clinical translation still faces many problems, such as poor manufacturing feasibility, unstable circulation, extended-term biosafety risks, tumour heterogeneity, and a lack of standardised evaluation systems. Another reason is that the preclinical model may not be in the same environment as a person. The following are some promising directions for this paper: multimodal analysis, optimisation with additional data from artificial intelligence (AI), and descendant models of patients. The above ways can help to solve the problems caused by translation and provide new directions for the development of cancer therapy.