Nanocarriers-loaded with natural actives as newer therapeutic interventions for treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Cancer has always been a menace for the society. Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most lethal and 3rdlargest causes of deaths around the world.

Area covered: The emergence of natural actives is considered as the greatest boon for fighting cancer. The natural actives take precedence over the traditional chemotherapeutic drugs in terms of their multi-target, multi-level and coordinated effects in the treatment of HCC. Literature reports have indicated the tremendous potential of bioactive natural products in inhibiting the HCC via molecular drug targeting, augmented bioavailability, and the ability for both passive or active targeting and stimulus-responsive drug release characteristics. This review provides a newer treatment approaches involved in the mechanism of action of different natural actives used for the HCC treatment via different molecular pathways. Besides, the promising advantage of natural bioactive-loaded nanocarriers in HCC treatment has also been also presented in this review.

Expert opinion: The remarkable outcomes have been observed with therapeutic efficacy of the nanocarriers of natural actives in the treatment of HCC.Furthermore, it requires a thorough assessment of the safety and efficacy evaluation of the nanocarriers for the delivery of targeted natural active ingredients in HCC.]

KEYWORDS:

• Hepatocellular carcinoma
• natural actives
• nanomedicine
• targeted therapy
• liposomes
• nanoparticles

Acknowledgment

The authors also would like to thank for the Deanship of Scientific Research at Umm Al-Qura University for supporting this work by Grant code 20UQU0034DSR.

Article highlights

• Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the world’s most deadly hepatitis diseases. It is primarily associated with issues such as multidrug resistance (MDR), late detection, elevated adverse reactions and increased chance of tumor recurrence.

• Chemotherapeutic drugs also have restricted use in HCC, due to severe adverse effects such as hepatic dysfunction, cardiotoxicity, neurotoxicity, and hypersensitivity, which make the situation worse.

• In HCC therapy, natural bioactive such as curcumin, glycyrrhetinic acid, ganoderic acid, mRNA, siRNA, DNA etc., play a key role. The utility of natural bioactive as well as their potential molecular targets for the successful distribution of nanomedicines in HCC therapy are discussed in this study.

• For the HCC therapy, several overexpressed receptors and proteins are selected, for example, asialoglycoprotein receptor (ASGPR), glypican-3(GPC3), transferrin receptor (TfR), somatostatin receptor (SSTR).

• The system based on nanocarriers of drug delivery has a significant scientific interest because of the substantial effects on the enhancement of the therapeutic efficacy of drug molecules in HCC therapy.

• The presence of nano delivery systems has essential benefits such as numerous nano-transporters such as liposomes and micelle, etc., which facilitates the efficient distribution of natural bioactive by enhanced solubilization, permeation, degradation defense and inhibition of reticuloendothelial system absorption.

This box summarizes key points contained in the article.

Reviewer disclosures

Peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial or other relationships to disclose.

Additional information

Funding

This paper was not funded.