Recent Advances in Nanomaterials-Based Drug Delivery System for Cancer Treatment

Despite incredible innovation in the current medical world, cancer remains a lethal disease struggling to cure and becomes a prime reason for deaths worldwide. In recent years, surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy are the major treatment modalities targeted to eradicate the various types of cancers. Conventional cancer treatments effectively destroy cancer cells, but they are also harmful to the normal healthy cells and tissues. A variety of nanomaterials recently appear as promising tools for cancer treatment due to the unique mechanism of passive and active tumor-targeted drug delivery. Various types of nanomaterials-based drug delivery platforms such as organic and inorganic nanomaterials have been significantly investigated for cancer treatment because they can load and carry anticancer drugs and accumulate drugs in the tumor site via passive or active targeting, thereby specifically carrying chemotherapeutic drugs to the preferred tumor sites. These functionalized nanomaterials will prominently enhance the chemotherapeutic drugs’ therapeutic efficacy while decreasing nonspecific adverse effects in cancer treatment. Additionally, remarkable efforts have been recently committed to developing targeted and controlled drug delivery systems from a variety of nanomaterials for cancer treatment, which can deliver drugs with a controlled manner to target tumor site and concurrently monitor therapeutic response by visualizing cancer cells. This chapter aims to emphasize the distinguished advantage of nanomaterials-based drug delivery systems and the mechanism of action underlying their selective targeted drug delivery effects and to introduce successful recent nanomaterials and their drug delivery systems for cancer treatment.