Nanogels as target drug delivery systems in cancer therapy: A review of the last decade

Abstract

Cancer is an important cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide, irrespective of the level of human development. Globally, it was estimated that there were 19.3 million new cases of cancer and almost 10 million deaths from cancer in 2020. The importance of prevention, early detection as well as effective cancer therapies cannot be over-emphasized. One of the important strategies in cancer therapy is targeted drug delivery to the specific tumor sites. Nanogels are among the several drug delivery systems (DDS) being explored as potential candidates for targeted drug delivery in cancer therapy. Nanogels, which are new generation, versatile DDS with the possession of dual characteristics of hydrogels and nanoparticles have shown great potential as targeted DDS in cancer therapy. Nanogels are hydrogels with a three-dimensional (3D) tunable porous structure and a particle size in the nanometre range, from 20 to 200 nm. They have been visualized as ideal DDS with enormous drug loading capacity, and high stability. Nanogels can be modified to achieve active targeting and enhance drug accumulation in disease sites. They can be designed to be stimulus-responsive, and react to internal or external stimuli such as pH, temperature, light, redox, thus resulting in the controlled release of loaded drug. This prevents drug accumulation in non-target tissues and minimizes the side effects of the drug. Drugs with severe adverse effects, short circulation half-life, and easy degradability by enzymes, such as anti-cancer drugs, and proteins, are suitable for delivery by chemically cross-linked or physically assembled nanogel systems. This systematic review summarizes the evolution of nanogels for targeted drug delivery for cancer therapy over the last decade. On-going clinical trials and recent applications of nanogels as targeted DDS for cancer therapy will be discussed in detail. The review will be concluded with discussions on safety and regulatory considerations as well as future research prospects of nanogel-targeted drug delivery for cancer therapy.

Application of injectable hydrogels in cancer immunotherapy

“…Various immunotherapy drugs that can cause anti-tumor immune responses have been developed recently, but the inefficiency of drug delivery and serious side effects of these anti-cancer drugs throughout the body have hindered their use in cancer immunotherapy (Kim et al, 2022). It can specifically deliver and continuously release drugs with therapeutic effects at the target site, which not only reduces the systemic toxicity caused by systemic circulation but also improves the administration efficiency, therefore, the efficacy of cancer treatment is significantly improved (Elstad and Fowers, 2009;Wu et al, 2016;Shin and Kwon, 2017;Tiwari et al, 2018;Attama et al, 2022). What's more, it enables the regulated release of the medicine, minimizing the non-specific distribution of the drug in healthy tissue (Hamidi et al, 2008;Li and Mooney, 2016;Xue et al, 2017;Riley et al, 2019b;Xie et al, 2021;Li Y. et al, 2022).…”

Recent Advances in Hydrogel-Based Phototherapy for Tumor Treatment

“…Furthermore, various nanogel configurations can be synthesized, such as yolk–shell architectures, double-walled structures, hollow nanogels, and core-shell nanoparticles [ 103 , 104 , 105 , 106 , 107 ]. Over the years, the biomedical applications of nanogels have been the subject of numerous review articles, many of which have examined the advancements made in drug delivery [ 108 , 109 , 110 , 111 ], regenerative medicine [ 112 , 113 ], imaging [ 114 , 115 , 116 , 117 ], diagnostics [ 118 , 119 , 120 ], theranostics [ 121 , 122 ], and tumor therapy [ 111 , 123 , 124 , 125 ].…”

Therapeutic potential and limitations of curcumin as antimetastatic agent

“…Nanoparticles are a well-studied system for drug transport, especially for anticancer agents with a high therapeutic impact [263][264][265][266][267]. In the case of curcumin, nanoformulations can significantly increase its stability and physiological concentration and thereby its anticancer effect [158].…”