Development of highly efficient nanocarrier-mediated delivery approaches for cancer therapy

•General aspects and advances of nanocarriers in a view of passive or active targeting modality in cancer therapy.•Typical approaches of nanocarrier-mediated drug delivery through systemic or non-systemic administration.•Recently devised functional nanocarriers with capability for co-integration of multi-drugs or for stimuli-activatable drug delivery.

Nanocarriers (NCs) are a group of nano-sized vehicles devised to deliver drugs to targeted malignant tissues or organs that provide remarkably improved targeting efficiency and therapeutic efficacy for cancer therapy. A variety of NCs have been developed to accommodate appropriate loading and release of drugs with a wide spectrum of chemical and physical characteristics. In addition, physicochemical modifications to the surface or interior of NCs allow for modulation of pharmacokinetic features reflecting clinical demands. However, cancer-related mortality is still high and drug-mediated cancer treatment remains a challenging research field despite the remarkable advances in targeting efficiency and therapeutic efficacy resulting from NCs. In this review, we focus on typical approaches and recent trends in NC-mediated drug delivery systems and their potential for targeted cancer therapy.