Nanosoldiers: A promising strategy to combat triple negative breast cancer

Abstract

The phenomenal rise in cancer over the past few years has made it the second leading cause of death worldwide. Breast cancer constitutes the predominant cancer encountered in women. Triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) is the most notorious form of breast cancer which involves absence of the estrogen, progesterone and human epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) on breast cancer cells. It is a real challenge for oncologists owing to the recurrence and metastasis which result in poor prognosis. Conventional therapies employed in treatment of TNBC suffer from issues of poor bioavailability, poor cellular uptake, resistance, and undesirable off-site toxicities. Nanosized delivery systems, herein designated as nanosoldiers can be smartly designed to be equipped with multiple weapons (drugs, genetic materials, photosensitizers, etc.) to fight the battle against recalcitrant TNBC in a myriad of ways such as bioavailability enhancement, targeted uptake by the TNBC cells, on-demand drug delivery at tumour site, combination therapy, multimodal therapy, photodynamic therapy, photothermal therapy, anti-metastatic approaches, theranostics, etc. The versatility of nanosoldiers with respect to their material of composition, their mechanism of drug loading and release, ability to modify in vivo drug disposition, multifunctional characteristics enabling detection, treatment, and monitoring, etc. endows them with incredible potential to destroy the intractable TNBC cells. The focus of the review is to highlight the extraordinary potential of nanocarriers in treatment of TNBC and few challenges which need to be overcome for these nanosoldiers to form a part of the clinical armamentarium of anticancer agents.

Keywords: Bioavailability; Clinical trials; Combination therapy; Gene delivery; Hyaluronic acid; Immunotherapy; Metastasis; Multimodal therapy; Nanoparticles; Photodynamic therapy; Photothermal therapy; Targeted; Theranostic; Triple negative breast cancer.