Albumin based versatile multifunctional nanocarriers for cancer therapy: Fabrication, surface modification, multimodal therapeutics and imaging approaches

•The review describes the use of albumin based nanocarriers in cancer targeting.•Role of different ligands in the surface modification of albumin based nanocarriers.•Albumin based Nanoconjugates like albumin-drug conjugate, albumin-metal conjugate and albumin-polymer conjugates in cancer therapy.•Recent advances of albumin based nanocarriers in multimodal therapy and biomedical field.•Albumin based marketed formulations and clinical trials.

Albumin is a versatile protein used as a carrier system for cancer therapeutics. As a carrier it can provide tumor specificity, reduce drug related toxicity, maintain therapeutic concentration of the active moiety like drug, gene, peptide, protein etc. for long period of time and also reduce drug related toxicities. Apart from cancer therapy, it is also utilized in the imaging and multimodal therapy of cancer. This review highlights the important properties, structure and types of albumin based nanocarriers with regards to their use for cancer targeting. It also provides brief discussion on methods of preparation of these nanocarriers and their surface modification. Applications of albumin nanocarriers for cancer therapy, gene delivery, imaging, phototherapy and multimodal therapy have also been discussed. This review also provides brief discussion about albumin based marketed nano formulations and those under clinical trials.

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