The Application Progress of Tumor Microenvironment-Responsive Drug Carriers in Precision Chemotherapy

Drug therapy is a necessary means of treating malignant tumors. By taking or injecting drugs, it effectively inhibits or reduces the number of tumor cells in the body and controls the metastasis of tumor cells. However, drug therapy may resultin a series of side effects during the treatment process, such as hair loss and liver function damage, which aggravates the treatment pain of patients. In recent years, researchers have proposed a type of responsive drug carrier based on the tumor microenvironment (TME) cells in response to the differences between the extracellular environment of tumor cells and that of normal cells, in order to improve therapeutic targeting and reduce therapeutic side effects. This article focuses on the differences in pH value, REDOX substance concentration and enzyme expression between tumor cells and normal somatic cells in the TME, explores the differences among different indicators and the mechanism of designing responsive carriers. Meanwhile, taking an experimental model of delivering curcumin based on a pH-temperature combined responsive polymer carrier as an example, the feasibility of targeted release is analyzed. Meanwhile, due to the high heterogeneity of human cancer cells, the possible errors and limitations of the experimental model are evaluated. In addition, the prospects of artificial intelligence-assisted personalized drug carriers are discussed in a multivariate manner based on the TME.