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Albumin has shown remarkable promise as a natural drug carrier by improving pharmacokinetic (PK) profiles of anticancer drugs for tumor-targeted delivery. The exogenous or endogenous albumin enhances the circulatory half-lives of anticancer drugs and passively target the tumors by the enhanced permeability and retention (EPR) effect. Thus, the albumin-based drug delivery leads to a potent antitumor efficacy in various preclinical models, and several candidates have been evaluated clinically. The most successful example is Abraxane, an exogenous human serum albumin (HSA)-bound paclitaxel formulation approved by the FDA and used to treat locally advanced or metastatic tumors. However, additional clinical translation of exogenous albumin formulations has not been approved to date because of their unexpectedly low delivery efficiency, which can increase the risk of systemic toxicity. To overcome these limitations, several prodrugs binding endogenous albumin covalently have been investigated owing to distinct advantages for a safe and more effective drug delivery. In this review, we give account of the different albumin-based drug delivery systems, from laboratory investigations to clinical applications, and their potential challenges, and the outlook for clinical translation is discussed. In addition, recent advances and progress of albumin-binding drugs to move more closely to the clinical settings are outlined.

Proteolysis-targeting chimeras (PROTACs) are rapidly emerging as a potential therapeutic strategy for cancer therapy by inducing the degradation of tumor-overexpressing oncogenic proteins. They can specifically catalyze the degradation of target oncogenic proteins by recruiting E3 ligases and utilizing the ubiquitin-proteasome pathway. Since their mode of action is universal, irreversible, recyclable, long-lasting, and applicable to ‘undruggable’ proteins, PROTACs are gradually replacing the role of conventional small molecular inhibitors. Moreover, their application areas are being expanded to cancer immunotherapy as various types of oncogenic proteins that are involved in immunosuppressive tumor microenvironments. However, poor water solubility and low cell permeability considerably restrict the pharmacokinetic (PK) property, which necessitates the use of appropriate delivery systems for cancer immunotherapy. In this review, the general characteristics, developmental status, and PK of PROTACs are first briefly covered. Next, recent studies on the application of various types of passive or active targeting delivery systems for PROTACs are introduced, and their effects on the PK and tumor-targeting ability of PROTACs are described. Finally, recent drug delivery systems of PROTACs for cancer immunotherapy are summarized. The adoption of an adequate delivery system for PROTAC is expected to accelerate the clinical translation of PROTACs, as well as improve its efficacy for cancer therapy.

Background In recent studies of cancer therapies, chemodrugs have attracted interest, acting not only as traditional chemotherapeutic agents but also as anticancer immune-activating agents. Specific types of chemodrugs have been demonstrated to exhibit superior anticancer efficacy to others through directly exerting toxic effects on cancer cells and indirectly by inducing immunogenic cell death (ICD) to recruit immune cells to kill them. However, chemodrug-based ICD has not yet achieved satisfactory therapeutic outcomes because of various limitations, including the poor tumor delivery efficiency of chemodrugs, the strong resistance of tumor tissues to chemodrugs, and the immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment. Area covered This review briefly introduces ICD-inducing chemodrugs and their properties, and then explains the advantages of nanomedicine in ICD-inducing chemodrug delivery. Further, studies on chemodrug-loaded nanomedicine-based combined immunotherapy are discussed, with a focus on the cooperative effect of ICD induction with other co-administered immunotherapeutic modalities. Expert opinion It is possible to obtain better pharmacokinetic properties and tumor accumulation efficiency when using chemodrug-loaded nanomedicines compared with free chemodrugs, resulting in stronger ICD-inducing effects. The tumor-targeting efficiency of nanomedicines can be further improved by their modification with active targeting or tumor stimuli-responsive moieties while diminishing their undesirable biodistribution. Nanomedicines also facilitate the simultaneous delivery of ICD-inducing chemodrugs and other immunotherapeutic agents; these act synergistically to enhance the efficacy of ICD-based combined immunotherapy, even against highly drug-resistant and immunosuppressive tumors. Nanomedicine is expected to provide a promising approach to overcoming the challenges of ICD-inducing chemodrug-based combination cancer immunotherapy.

Over the last 30 years, diverse types of nano-sized drug delivery systems (nanoDDSs) have been intensively explored for cancer therapy, exploiting their passive tumor targetability with an enhanced permeability and retention effect. However, their systemic administration has aroused some unavoidable complications, including insufficient tumor-targeting efficiency, side effects due to their undesirable biodistribution, and carrier-associated toxicity. In this review, the recent studies and advancements in intratumoral nanoDDS administration are generally summarized. After identifying the factors to be considered to enhance the therapeutic efficacy of intratumoral nanoDDS administration, the experimental results on the application of intratumoral nanoDDS administration to various types of cancer therapies are discussed. Subsequently, the reports on clinical studies of intratumoral nanoDDS administration are addressed in short. Intratumoral nanoDDS administration is proven with its versatility to enhance the tumor-specific accumulation and retention of therapeutic agents for various therapeutic modalities. Specifically, it can improve the efficacy of therapeutic agents with poor bioavailability by increasing their intratumoral concentration, while minimizing the side effect of highly toxic agents by restricting their delivery to normal tissues. Intratumoral administration of nanoDDS is considered to expand its application area due to its potent ability to improve therapeutic effects and relieve the systemic toxicities of nanoDDSs.

The advancement of stem cell therapy has offered transformative therapeutic outcomes for a wide array of diseases over the past decades. Consequently, stem cell tracking has become significant in revealing the mechanisms of action and ensuring safe and effective treatments. Fluorescence stands out as a promising choice for stem cell tracking due to its myriad advantages, including high resolution, real-time monitoring, and multi-fluorescence detection. Furthermore, combining fluorescence with other tracking modalities—such as bioluminescence imaging (BLI), positron emission tomography (PET), photoacoustic (PA), computed tomography (CT), and magnetic resonance (MR)—can address the limitations of single fluorescence detection. This review initially introduces stem cell tracking using fluorescence imaging, detailing various labeling strategies such as green fluorescence protein (GFP) tagging, fluorescence dye labeling, and nanoparticle uptake. Subsequently, we present several combinations of strategies for efficient and precise detection.

BackgroundNano-sized drug delivery system has been widely studied as a potential technique to promote tumor-specific delivery of anticancer drugs due to its passive targeting property, but resulting in very restricted improvements in its systemic administration so far. There is a requirement for a different approach that dramatically increases the targeting efficiency of therapeutic agents at targeted tumor tissues.MethodsTo improve the tumor-specific accumulation of anticancer drugs and minimize their undesirable toxicity to normal tissues, a tumor-implantable micro-syringe chip (MSC) with a drug reservoir is fabricated. As a clinically established delivery system, six liposome nanoparticles (LNPs) with different compositions and surface chemistry are prepared and their physicochemical properties and cellular uptake are examined in vitro. Subsequently, MSC-guided intratumoral administration is studied to identify the most appropriate for the higher tumor targeting efficacy with a uniform intratumoral distribution. For efficient cancer treatment, pro-apoptotic anticancer prodrugs (SMAC-P-FRRG-DOX) are encapsulated to the optimal LNPs (SMAC-P-FRRG-DOX encapsulating LNPs; ApoLNPs), then the ApoLNPs are loaded into the 1 μL-volume drug reservoir of MSC to be delivered intratumorally for 9 h. The tumor accumulation and therapeutic effect of ApoLNPs administered via MSC guidance are evaluated and compared to those of intravenous and intratumoral administration of ApoLNP in 4T1 tumor-bearing mice.ResultsMSC is precisely fabricated to have a 0.5 × 4.5 mm needle and 1 μL-volume drug reservoir to achieve the uniform intratumoral distribution of LNPs in targeted tumor tissues. Six liposome nanoparticles with different compositions of 1-palmitoyl-2-oleoyl-glycero-3-phosphocholine (PC), 1,2-dioleoyl-sn-glycero-3-phospho-L-serine (PS), 1,2-dioleoyl-3-trimethylammonium-propane (DOTAP), and 1,2-distearoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphoethanolamine-N-[methoxy (polyethylene glycol)2000] (PEG2000-DSPE) are prepared with average sizes of 100–120 nm and loaded into the 1 μL-volume drug reservoir in MSC. Importantly negatively charged 10 mol% of PS-containing LNPs are very slowly infused into the tumor tissue through the micro-syringe of the MSC over 6 h. The intratumoral targeting efficiency of MSC guidance is 93.5%, effectively assisting the homogeneous diffusion of LNPs throughout the tumor tissue at 3.8- and 2.7-fold higher concentrations compared to the intravenous and intratumoral administrations of LNPs, respectively. Among the six LNP candidates 10 mol% of PS-containing LNPs are finally selected for preparing pro-apoptotic SMAC-P-FRRG-DOX anticancer prodrug-encapsulated LNPs (ApoLNPs) due to their moderate endocytosis rate high tumor accumulation and homogenous intratumoral distribution. The ApoLNPs show a high therapeutic effect specifically to cathepsin B-overexpressing cancer cells with 6.6 μM of IC50 value while its IC50 against normal cells is 230.7 μM. The MSC-guided administration of ApoLNPs efficiently inhibits tumor growth wherein the size of the tumor is 4.7- and 2.2-fold smaller than those treated with saline and intratumoral ApoLNP without MSC, respectively. Moreover, the ApoLNPs remarkably reduce the inhibitor of apoptosis proteins (IAPs) level in tumor tissues confirming their efficacy even in cancers with high drug resistance.ConclusionThe MSC-guided administration of LNPs greatly enhances the therapeutic efficiency of anticancer drugs via the slow diffusion mechanism through micro-syringe to tumor tissues for 6 h, whereas they bypass most hurdles of systemic delivery including hepatic metabolism, rapid renal clearance, and interaction with blood components or other normal tissues, resulting in the minimum toxicity to normal tissues. The negatively charged ApoLNPs with cancer cell-specific pro-apoptotic prodrug (SMAC-P-FRRG-DOX) show the highest tumor-targeting efficacy when they are treated with the MSC guidance, compared to their intravenous or intratumoral administration in 4T1 tumor-bearing mice. The MSC-guided administration of anticancer drug-encapsulated LNPs is expected to be a potent platform system that facilitates overcoming the limitations of systemic drug administration with low delivery efficiency and serious side effects.

The cathepsin B-responsive prodrugs are promising strategies to reduce the serious adverse effects of anticancer drugs by improving the cancer selectivity that can be specifically activated by overexpressed cathepsin B in targeted cancer cells. However, clinical translation of such therapeutic approaches has been restricted by low antitumor efficacy that is mainly attributable to undesirable pharmacokinetic profiles and inefficient tumor-targeting of cathepsin B-responsive prodrugs, due to their small-molecule structure. In recent decades, many researchers have widely investigated the drug delivery system (DDS) to improve the in vivo pharmacokinetic profiles and tumor-targeting efficiency of cathepsin B-responsive prodrugs via the application of polymers, dendrimers, antibodies, lipids, and inorganic nanoparticles as drug carriers. In addition, the potential therapeutic efficacy of DDS for cathepsin B-responsive prodrugs is demonstrated in multiple studies and combinatorial treatment with typical therapeutic modalities can effectively overcome the challenges of tumor heterogeneity and multidrug resistance. In this review, recent advances and progress of new DDS for cathepsin B-responsive prodrugs are outlined, and their clinical trials are discussed. Besides, potential challenges and the outlooks for clinical translation of cathepsin B-responsive prodrugs are highlighted.

Carbon fiber reinforced composites (CFRCs) have been used in various high-end industries due to their outstanding specific mechanical properties. Recently, carbon nanotube (CNT)-grafted carbon fibers (CFs) made via direct growth has emerged as an advanced and hierarchical reinforcement that can improve the reinforcing effect of CFs in CFRCs. On the other hand, CF reinforced thermoplastic composites (CFRTPs) have attracted much attention because of their quick and mass production capability, e.g., which is important for automotive part manufacturing. Here, we report on the manufacture of CFRTPs using CNT-grafted CFs and their mechanical properties. First, the interfacial shear strength of CNT-grafted CFs with thermoplastic resins was characterized to demonstrate improved interfacial properties due to the CNTs grafted on CFs. Then, the composites were manufactured in two ways; polymer nanoparticles and in-situ polymerization. Polymer nanoparticles were used to improve the interfacial properties due to their small size and good mechanical locking with CF surfaces. In-situ polymerization was also used to manufacture CFRTPs, i.e., monomers with catalyst were transferred into CNT-grafted CF fabric preform using vacuum assisted resin transfer molding and then polymerized into solid matrix. This in-situ polymerization enabled the manufacture of CNT-grafted CF thermoplastic composites by overcoming the difficulties of filling the surface of CNT-grafted CFs with thermoplastic polymers. Finally, the mechanical, thermal, electrical, and damping properties of CNT-grafted CF thermoplastic composites were characterized and compared with their thermoset composites.