Recent Advances in the Local Drug Delivery Systems for Improvement of Anticancer Therapy

: The conventional anticancer chemotherapies not only cause serious toxic effects, but also produce resistance in tumor cells exposed to long-term therapy. Usually, the killing of metastasized cancer cells requires long-term therapy with higher drug doses, because the cancer cells develop resistance due to the induction of poly-glycoproteins (P-gps) that act as a transmembrane efflux pump to transport drugs out of the cells. During the last few decades, scientists have been exploring new anticancer drug delivery systems such as microencapsulation, hydrogels, and nanotubes to improve bioavailability, reduce drug-dose requirement, decrease multiple drug resistance, and to save normal cells as non-specific targets. Hopefully, the development of novel drug delivery vehicles (nanotubes, liposomes, supramolecules, hydrogels, and micelles) will assist to deliver drug molecules at the specific target site and reduce the undesirable side effects of anticancer therapies in humans. Nanoparticles and lipid formulations are also designed to deliver small drug payload at the desired tumor cell sites for their anticancer actions. This review will focus on the recent advances in the drug delivery systems, and their application in treating different cancer types in humans.