Cancer is a life-threatening disease contributing to ~3.4 million deaths worldwide. There are various causes of cancer, such as smoking, being overweight or obese, intake of processed meat, radiation, family history, stress, environmental factors, and chance. The first-line treatment of cancer is the surgical removal of solid tumours, radiation therapy, and chemotherapy. The systemic administration of the free drug is considered to be the main clinical failure of chemotherapy in cancer treatment, as limited drug concentration reaches the tumour site. Most of the active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) used in chemotherapy are highly cytotoxic to both cancer and normal cells. Accordingly, targeting the tumour vasculatures is essential for tumour treatment. In this context, encapsulation of anti-cancer drugs within the liposomal system offers secure platforms for the targeted delivery of anti-cancer drugs for the treatment of cancer. This, in turn, can be helpful for reducing the cytotoxic side effects of anti-cancer drugs on normal cells. This short-review focuses on the use of liposomes in anti-cancer drug delivery.

Polyurethanes (PUs), formed by the reaction of diisocyanates with polyols (or equivalent) in the presence of a catalyst, have a wide variety of industrial uses. Much recent attention has focused on their biomedical applications, owing to their biocompatibility, biodegradability and tailorable chemical and physical forms. Examples of such application areas include antibacterial surfaces and catheters, drug delivery vehicles, stents, surgical dressings/pressure sensitive adhesives, tissue engineering scaffolds and electrospinning, nerve generation, cardiac patches and PU coatings for breast implants. Following a brief introduction to PUs, this review surveys selected articles, mostly from 2014 to 2017, that highlight this diverse range of biomedical applications offered by PU materials and coatings.