Functional Nanomedicines for Targeted Therapy of Bladder Cancer

Abstract

Bladder cancer is one of most common malignant urinary tract tumor types with high incidence worldwide. In general, transurethral resection of non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer followed by intravesical instillation of chemotherapy is the standard treatment approach to minimize recurrence and delay progression of bladder cancer. However, conventional intravesical chemotherapy lacks selectivity for tumor tissues and the concentration of drug is reduced with the excretion of urine, leading to frequent administration and heavy local irritation symptoms. While nanomedicines can overcome all the above shortcomings and adhere to the surface of bladder tumors for a long time, and continuously and efficiently release drugs to bladder cancers. The rapid advances in targeted therapy have led to significant improvements in drug efficacy and precision of targeted drug delivery to eradicate tumor cells, with reduced side-effects. This review summarizes the different available nano-systems of targeted drug delivery to bladder cancer tissues. The challenges and prospects of targeted therapy for bladder cancer are additionally discussed.

LAPONITE® nanodisk-based platforms for cancer diagnosis and therapy

“…Chemotherapy is still a common method for cancer therapy, but the commonly employed anticancer drugs suffer problems of poor water solubility, low selectivity and undesirable side effects. 38,39 LAP NDs can be used as nanocarriers for the delivery of a wide range of therapeutic drugs due to the fact that they can be tailored to have different surface modifications and have different ways to encapsulate drugs, providing many promising opportunities for enhanced anticancer drug delivery applications. In addition, phototherapy has also been developed with high efficiency, low invasiveness, and few side effects.…”

“…Small molecular chemotherapeutic drugs have drawbacks in the clinical treatment of tumors, and the long-term use of high-dose chemotherapeutic drugs is likely to cause drug resistance in tumor tissues. 39 The side effects and the multidrug resistance (MDR) of the tumors seriously compromise the bioavailability of the drugs, thus affecting their therapeutic efficacy. 43 LAP NDs have several advantages, including the ability to transport drugs with high payloads, extended drug half-life, reduced drug toxicity, and improved targeting efficiency.…”

A comprehensive review on hydrogel materials in urology: Problems, methods, and new opportunities

“…It enables a rapid release process of the therapeutic substance. The positive surface charge and amphipathy enable mucoadhesion and permeability across the cell membrane while inhibiting tumor growth 66–68 . The content of disulfide bonds in the system, which are degraded by the high concentrations of glutathione in tumor cells, accelerates the release of the therapeutic substance resulting in a reduction of their proliferation 66,69 .…”

“…The positive surface charge and amphipathy enable mucoadhesion and permeability across the cell membrane while inhibiting tumor growth. [66][67][68] The content of disulfide bonds in the system, which are degraded by the high concentrations of glutathione in tumor cells, accelerates the release of the therapeutic substance resulting in a reduction of their proliferation. 66,69 In order to increase the mucoadhesiveness and penetration of the gel, the team of Hui Guo et al synthesized a smart nanogel of oligoargininepoly(ethylene glycol)-poly(L-phenylalanine-co -L-cystine) (R9-PEG-P…”

“…The team of Hui Guo et al [66][67][68][69] Cationic disulfide-crosslinked poly(llysine)-poly(l-phenylalanine-co-lcystine) (PLL-P [LP-co-LC]) nanogel…”