Nanomaterial Based Treatment Strategies in Triple Negative Breast Cancer: Traditional Review

Abstract

Advances in materials science and nanotechnology have revealed nanomaterial-based drugs as a potential tool for cancer treat-ment. Thus, it has been possible to target anticancer drugs to cancer cells by loading them into a packaging system made of nanomaterials, to reduce the toxicity of anticancer drugs, to increase their efficiency and circulation process, and even to make the drug specific to cancer cells by means of cell surface marker-specific antigens. Triple negative breast cancer, is one of the malignant tumors characterized by the absence of estrogen and progesterone hormone receptors and under-expression of Human epidermal growth factor receptor-2 (HER2), is highly invasive, accounting for 15-20% of all breast cancer cases, and has a poor prognosis with metastatic features. Patients with triple negative breast cancer do not benefit from hormonal or trastuzumab-based treatments that target cell surface receptors. Still, many chemothera-peutic drugs do not reach the tumor site in effective doses and generally show high systemic toxicity and poor pharmacokinetics. Therefore, a wide range of nanotechnology-based platforms are being explored as potential therapeutic options to overcome the clinical challenges of triple negative breast cancer therapy. To increase the efficacy of delivering therapeutic agents to breast cancer tumors, various nanoparticle drug carriers have been developed to target tumor cells, tumor vascularisation and tumor microenvironment. In this review, we discuss the treatment strategies of triple negative breast cancer through nanomaterials in detail and we aim to present a perspective on this issue.