Background: Despite all the advances achieved in the field of tumor-biology research, in most cases conventional therapies including chemotherapy are still the leading choices. The main disadvantage of these treatments, in addition to the low solubility of many antitumor drugs, is their lack of specificity, which leads to the occurrence of severe side effects due to nonspecific drug uptake by healthy cells. Objective: The purpose of this manuscript is to review and analyze the recent progress made in cancer nanotherapy. Results: Progress in nanotechnology and its application in medicine have provided new opportunities and different smart systems. Such systems can improve the intracellular delivery of the drugs due to their multifunctionality and targeting potential. First, we provide a global overview of cancer and different smart nanoparticles currently used in oncology. Then, we analyze in detail the development of drug-delivery strategies in cancer therapy, focusing mainly on the intravenously administered smart nanoparticles. Finally, we discuss the challenges, clinical trials, marketed nanomedicines and future directions of the nanotherapy applied to cancer treatment. Conclusión: In this review, we have evidenced the tremendous potential that smart drug-delivery systems have to enhance the therapeutic effect of current standard treatment modalities, including chemotherapies and radiotherapies.

Poly-lactic-co-glycolic acid (PLGA) is one of the most widely used synthetic polymers for development of delivery systems for drugs and therapeutic biomolecules and as component of tissue engineering applications. Its properties and versatility allow it to be a reference polymer in manufacturing of nano- and microparticles to encapsulate and deliver a wide variety of hydrophobic and hydrophilic molecules. It additionally facilitates and extends its use to encapsulate biomolecules such as proteins or nucleic acids that can be released in a controlled way. This review focuses on the use of nano/microparticles of PLGA as a delivery system of one of the most commonly used growth factors in bone tissue engineering, the bone morphogenetic protein 2 (BMP2). Thus, all the needed requirements to reach a controlled delivery of BMP2 using PLGA particles as a main component have been examined. The problems and solutions for the adequate development of this system with a great potential in cell differentiation and proliferation processes under a bone regenerative point of view are discussed.

Lipid nanocapsules (NCs) represent promising tools in clinical practice for diagnosis and therapy applications. However, the NC appropriate functionalization is essential to guarantee high biocompatibility and molecule loading ability. In any medical application, the immune system-impact of differently functionalized NCs still remains to be fully understood. A comprehensive study on the action exerted on human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) and major immune subpopulations by three different NC coatings: pluronic, chitosan and polyethylene glycol-polylactic acid (PEG) is reported. After a deep particle characterization, the uptake was assessed by flow-cytometry and confocal microscopy, focusing then on apoptosis, necrosis and proliferation impact in T cells and monocytes. Cell functionality by cell diameter variations, different activation marker analysis and cytokine assays were performed. We demonstrated that the NCs impact on the immune cell response is strongly correlated to their coating. Pluronic-NCs were able to induce immunomodulation of innate immunity inducing monocyte activations. Immunomodulation was observed in monocytes and T lymphocytes treated with Chitosan-NCs. Conversely, PEG-NCs were completely inert. These findings are of particular value towards a pre-selection of specific NC coatings depending on biomedical purposes for pre-clinical investigations;i.e.the immune-specific action of particular NC coating can be excellent for immunotherapy applications.