Cell-penetrating peptides: strategies for anticancer treatment

•CPPs can deliver chemical drugs, peptides, siRNA, and imaging agents.•CPP delivery is potentiated by passive or active targeting techniques.•Activation of CPPs can be controlled by external stimuli, such as local hyperthermia.

Cell-penetrating peptides (CPP) provide an efficient strategy for the intracellular delivery of bioactive molecules in various biomedical applications. This review focuses on recent advances in the use of CPPs to deliver anticancer therapeutics and imaging reagents to cancer cells, along with CPP contributions to novel tumor-targeting techniques. CPPs are now used extensively to deliver a variety of therapeutics, despite lacking cell specificity and having a short duration of action. Resolution of these shortcomings to enable increased cancer cell and/or tumor specificity could improve CPP-based drug delivery strategies, expand combined drug delivery possibilities, and strengthen future clinical applications of these peptides.