Nanomedicine in Oral Cancer: A Paradigm Shift in Chemotherapeutic Approaches

Abstract Oral cancer remains a major challenge in global health due to the late stage at diagnosis, poor therapeutic efficacy, and high mortality rates. Traditional chemotherapeutic strategies are frequently limited by systemic toxicity, lack of specificity, and multidrug resistance. Nanomedicine presents a revolutionary solution by employing nanocarriers such as liposomes, polymeric, and metallic nanoparticles (NPs) to enhance drug delivery, bioavailability, and therapeutic precision. These nanocarriers can be functionalized for targeted delivery, thereby minimizing off-target effects while maximizing the accumulation of drugs in tumor tissues. In the current review, a bibliographic search was done in PubMed search engine for English articles that were published over the last 5 years. This review has been aimed at the revolutionization of oral cancer treatment by controlled drug release, theragnostic applications, and stimuli-responsive systems designed in accordance with the tumor microenvironment. The present challenges, such as scalability, regulatory hurdles, and biocompatibility are addressed with an emphasis on recent developments in the design of NPs. By filling the gap between nanotechnology and oncology, nanomedicine provides a new paradigm shift toward more personalized, effective, and safer treatments for oral cancer.