The progress and perspective of nanoparticle-enabled tumor metastasis treatment

Abstract

As one of the most serious threats to human being, cancer is hard to be treated when metastasis happens. What's worse, there are few identified targets of metastasis for drug development. Therefore, it is important to develop strategies to prevent metastasis or treat existed metastasis. This review focuses on the procedure of metastasis, and first summarizes the targeting delivery strategies, including primary tumor targeting drug delivery, tumor metastasis targeting drug delivery and hijacking circulation cells. Then, as a promising treatment, the application of immunotherapy in tumor metastasis treatment is introduced, and strategies that stimulating immune response are reviewed, including chemotherapy, photothermal therapy, photodynamic therapy, ferroptosis, sonodynamic therapy, and nanovaccines. Finally, the challenges and perspective about nanoparticle-enabled tumor metastasis treatment are discussed.

Photosensitizer-driven nanoassemblies of homodimeric prodrug for self-enhancing activation and synergistic chemo-photodynamic therapy

“…In addition, due to their narrow therapeutic windows, chemotherapeutic drugs usually show severe systemic toxicities 3 . Recently, nanotechnology has been widely utilized to address the poor physicochemical properties and off-target effects of chemotherapeutic drugs 4 - 6 . A variety of nanomedicines have been developed and applied for cancer therapy, such as albumin-bound paclitaxel (Abraxane) 7 .…”

Construction of nanomaterials as contrast agents or probes for glioma imaging

“…As technologies advance, considerable amounts of strategies have been developed to overcome the difficulties brought by BBB, of which the mechanisms can be categorized as follows: receptor-mediated transcytosis (RMT: peptides and proteins) [ 10 , 11 ], adsorption-mediated transcytosis [ 12 ] (AMT), cell-mediated penetration [ 13 ], cellular barrier (lack of pinocytosis and bulk flow transcytosis), simple diffusion (CO 2 , O 2 , alcohol, lipophilic drugs < 400 Da and8 hydrogen bonds), CMT (carbohydrates, fatty, acids, monocarboxylic acids, amino acids, hormones, vitamins, organic anions and cations, and nucleotides) [ 14 ], major facilitators (ω 3 fatty acids), ions and water (Na + /H + ; Cl − /HCO 3 − ; Na + /K + /2Cl − ; Na + /Ca 2+ ), active efflux (ABC transporters, drugs, xenobiotic products, and drug conjugates), clearance of neurotoxic substances, diffusion of molecules across brain ECS and another physical or chemical process, such as cavitation effect from high intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) [ 15 , 16 ]. Nanomaterials, with improved in vivo behaviors compared to small molecules, such as prolonged blood circulation time and enhanced accumulation in tumor sites, have been extensively explored to serve as nanoprobes for tumor imaging and therapy in the past decades [ 17 – 20 ]. The abundance of functional groups on the surface allows the conjugation of targeting molecules for RMT-mediated BBB crossing.…”

Targeted Micellar Phthalocyanine for Lymph Node Metastasis Homing and Photothermal Therapy in an Orthotopic Colorectal Tumor Model

“…Recently, systemic administration of nanoparticles has been explored to target LN metastasis. Through enhancing the penetration in tumor tissues by pH-responsive size reduction from 100 to 5 nm at the tumor site, nanoparticles were allowed to enter into the LNs through tumor-draining lymphatics [6,12]. Lymphatic vessels of solid tumors are poorly developed, which is a key pathophysiological basis of the enhanced permeation and retention (EPR) effect [13][14][15], and in most clinical cancer settings, chemotherapy is performed after the primary tumor is resected.…”