Nanocarriers and their Role in the Treatment of Breast Cancer

 Breast cancer is the most common disease in women worldwide, yet current pharmacological therapy is far from ideal due to the high mortality rate among breast cancer patients. Emerging nanomedicine is a viable therapy option for breast cancer. Various potential organic and inorganic nanoparticles are promising drug nanocarriers developed for targeted delivery in breast cancer therapy over the years, with evidence established. Nanocarriers have passive and ligand-based targeting mechanisms that allow them to accumulate preferentially in breast tumours. Besides many conventional nanocarriers, polymer-based nanocarriers include the application of dendrimers, polymersomes, polymeric nanoparticles, polymer micelles, polyplexes, polymer–lipid hybrid systems, and polymer-drug/Polymer-protein conjugates to improve breast cancer therapeutic efficacy, has expanded in the recent past. However, the concept of nanocarriers with drug conjugates is constrained to the lab size. They must be scaled up to generate active-targeted nanomedicine for clinical use against breast cancer. As a result, the current chapter focuses on research that has recently been reported in the exploration of emerging nanocarriers for breast cancer therapy.

Keywords: Breast cancer, Drug conjugates, Inorganic nanoparticles, Lipid-based nanocarriers, Nanocarriers, Targeted delivery, Therapeutic efficacy, Polymeric nanoparticles.