Strategic Engineering of Lipid Drug Carriers for the Treatment of Cancer

Lipid carriers are important pharmaceutical delivery systems for a variety of drugs. The primary advantage of lipid carriers lies in its ability to shield medicine cargos from proteolytic and phagocytic effects, and to facilitate delivery to tissues of interest. However, lipid carriers are also prone to systemic clearance and non-specific diffusion, thereby limiting their delivery rate to target tissues and the corresponding therapeutic efficacy. Recent research aimed at manipulating lipid membrane composition and targeting moiety has shown great promise for targeted delivery of cargo drugs. In this review, we discuss how synthetic lipid nanoparticles and naturally sourced extracellular vesicles such as exosomes are transformed with new technologies to enhance their pharmacological properties for the treatment of cancer.