94% of researchers rate our articles as excellent or good
Learn more about the work of our research integrity team to safeguard the quality of each article we publish.
Find out more
REVIEW article
Front. Pharmacol.
Sec. Experimental Pharmacology and Drug Discovery
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fphar.2025.1557155
Advanced materials for cancer treatment and beyond
Provisionally accepted- 1 Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Fuzhou, Fujian Province, China
- 2 University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, Beijing, China
- 3 College of Life Sciences, Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, Fuzhou, Fujian Province, China
- 4 National Engineering Research Center for Sugarcane, Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, Fuzhou, Fujian Province, China
- 5 Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, St. John’s University, newyork, United States
Conservative anti-cancer treatment represented by chemotherapy and surgery lacks tumorspecificity and could hardly resolve the problems associated with multidrug resistance (MDR) in cancers. Novel therapeutic materials in cancer treatment, such as those with anti-MDR or controllable treatment features, represent a significant trend due to their advantages of high and specific efficacy and timely intervention of cancer progress. In addition to their excellent biocompatibility and specificity, they can be utilized in therapies that require ease of operation, provided they are designed with high detection sensitivity. In this review, we summarize a series of recently developed materials that exhibit these advantages, including immune-enhancing and tumor microenvironment (TME)responsive materials, and those with integrated therapeutic and imaging capabilities. We also introduce advanced modification approaches that can impart essential targeting functionalities to these materials.
Keywords: reversal of multidrug resistance (MDR), tumor microenvironment (TME)-responsive material, controllable treatment of cancer, materials for enhancing immunity, integrated cancer diagnosis
Received: 08 Jan 2025; Accepted: 13 Feb 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhang, Wang, Li, Chen and Hu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Lei Zhang, Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Fuzhou, 350002, Fujian Province, China
Zhe-Sheng Chen, Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, St. John’s University, newyork, United States
Chaohua Hu, College of Life Sciences, Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, Fuzhou, Fujian Province, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.