Advances in Lipid Nanoparticle Carriers for Cancer Therapy
Malignant tumors, featuring strong heterogeneity, innate immune escape and acquired drug resistance, is the top cause of disease-related death worldwide. Traditional treatments for these cancers have serious drawbacks in terms of therapeutic efficacy and safety. Lipid nanoparticle (LNP) is the most powerful nonviral nucleic acid delivery vector to date and can achieve efficient encapsulation, protection and intracellular delivery of nucleic acid molecules with a biomimetic nanostructure interlinked synergistically assembled by core components, has become a key research vehicle in the field of cancer gene therapy. In this review, we summarize the composition of core functions of the component of LNPs, molecular evolution trajectory, targeting optimization and so on, and system summarize the latest research progress of LNP in targeted delivery of traditional chemotherapeutic agents, specific gene regulation by nucleic acid therapy and combination cancer therapy etc. Collectively, these pieces of work provide a complete academic reference for future fundamental studies and clinical translation of LNP-mediated cancer gene therapy technologies, and lay the theoretical basis for further non-viral nucleic acid vectors used in cancer gene therapy in the wider biomedical field.