Nanotechnology revolutionises breast cancer treatment: harnessing lipid-based nanocarriers to combat cancer cells

Abstract

One of the most common cancers that occur in females is breast cancer. Despite the significant leaps and bounds that have been made in treatment of breast cancer, the disease remains one of the leading causes of death among women and a major public health challenge. The therapeutic efficacy of chemotherapeutics is hindered by chemoresistance and toxicity. Nano-based lipid drug delivery systems offer controlled drug release, nanometric size and site-specific targeting. Breast cancer treatment includes surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Despite this, no single method of treatment for the condition is currently effective due to cancer stem cell metastasis and chemo-resistance. Therefore, the employment of nanocarrier systems is necessary in order to target breast cancer stem cells. This article addresses breast cancer treatment options, including modern treatment procedures such as chemotherapy, etc. and some innovative therapeutic options highlighting the role of lipidic nanocarriers loaded with chemotherapeutic drugs such as nanoemulsion, solid-lipid nanoparticles, nanostructured lipid carriers and liposomes, and their investigations have demonstrated that they can limit cancer cell growth, reduce the risk of recurrence, as well as minimise post-chemotherapy metastasis. This article also explores FDA-approved lipid-based nanocarriers, commercially available formulations, and ligand-based formulations that are being considered for further research.

Graphical Abstract

Keywords:

• Breast cancer
• multi-drug resistance (MDR)
• nanoemulsion (NE)
• solid-lipid nanoparticles (SLNs)
• nanostructured lipid carriers (NLCs)
• liposomes

Acknowledgements

All authors would like to thank Biorender for wonderful illustrations and The University of Queensland for providing the premium subscription of Biorender to Mohammad Imran at Frazer Institute.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The authors received the support from the ICMR, Govt. of India, New Delhi, India, for providing ICMR-SRF Research fellow to the first author (Grant Number: 45/12/2022/NAN/BMS).