Cancer is the disease with the highest mortality rate, which poses a great threat to people’s
lives. Cancer caused approximately 3.4 million death worldwide annually. Surgery, chemotherapy and
radiotherapy are the main therapeutic methods in clinical practice. However, surgery is only suitable
for patients with early-stage cancers, and chemotherapy as well as radiotherapy have various side effects,
both of which limit the application of available therapeutic methods. In 1965, liposome was
firstly developed to form new drug delivery systems given the unique properties of nanoparticles, such
as enhanced permeability and retention effect. During the last 5 decades, liposome has been widely
used for the purpose of anticancer drug delivery, and several advances have been made regarding
liposomal technology, including long-circulating liposomes, active targeting liposomes and triggered
release liposomes, while problems exist all along. This review introduced the advances as well as the
problems during the development of liposomal nanosystems for cancer therapy in recent years.