Cancer nanomedicine: A review on approaches and applications towards targeted drug delivery

Cancer prevails to be one of the main reasons of death across the globe. A large group of drugs and other therapies exist in the market for cancer treatment, yet, these conventional therapies have huge drawbacks such as low-specificity, off-target toxicity, and multidrug resistance that impact the standard of living of the patients. The concept of nanomedicine for targeted cancer therapy was able to overcome these problems, enhance the antitumor activity, and reduce systemic toxicity. Nanomedicine aims at utilizing properties of materials in the range of 1 to 100 nm for the treatment of diseases. Nanomedicine can achieve targeted therapy owing to the uncommon properties of nanoparticles and cancer itself. Cancer nanomedicine is used not only for treatment but its potential can also be expanded for early cancer diagnosis and tumor imaging. Many nanomedicines are currently in various phases of clinical trials and a few have already been authorized by the Food and Drug Administration for clinical use. This review highlights different approaches to targeted delivery of drugs and summarizes the utilization of various nanoparticles in targeted drug delivery, combination therapy, diagnosis, and imaging. Finally, this review also discusses the challenges that need to be overcome and provides an insight into future perspectives in the area of cancer nanomedicine.