SMART DRUGS AND CANCER TREATMENT

Cancer is an uncontrollable growth and development of cells in the body and one of the biggest reasons for death on a global scale. Despite the progress made in the understanding of cancer mechanisms, the strategies based on research are still at an incipient stage and the conventional treatments, mainly chemotherapy, remain the most widespread form of cancer treatment. However, these conventional therapies have several drawbacks, such as off-target effects, drug resistance, toxicity, and poor bio-availability of drugs to tumor tissue. Smart drugs and nanostructured drug delivery vehicles have been generally applied for cancer therapy due to improvements in medicine and technology to solve these such limitations of cancer treatment. Therefore, smart drugs offer more effective and less side-effect treatment for cancer compared to conventional therapies. In this review, we aimed to examine smart drugs, which have been increasingly used in cancer treatment in recent years.