Themed collection Polymeric biomaterials for cancer nanotechnology

Jianjun Cheng and Suzie H. Pun introduce this themed issue of Biomaterials Science on polymeric biomaterials for cancer nanotechnology

DNA scaffolds with programmability in size, shape and surface chemistry have been engineered for the delivery of various anticancer therapeutics.

This mini-review highlights the recent progress in cyclodextrin-functionalized polymers as drug carriers for cancer therapy.

Nano-delivery system has been widely studied and applied in cancer treatment over the past few decades. By taking advantage of both the drug and gene therapy, a growing number of co-delivery systems have been explored for cancer treatment recently.

Synthesis of dendrimers and their modified nanoparticles.

This review discusses the recent research trends in the polymeric delivery systems for platinum-based anticancer drugs.

The review gives a comprehensive summary and preliminary forecast of the extracellularly stimuli-mediated shell-sheddable polymeric nanocarriers for antitumor applications.

This review discusses methods for generating polymer nanoparticles with controlled shapes and identifies key effects of shape in biological systems.

Strategies for the development of polymeric nanocarriers responsive to different internal and external triggers modulating the drug release in a tumor environment, are reviewed.

The recent progress in synthesis, properties and biomedical applications of supramolecular hydrogels has been reviewed.

This review discusses the recent advancements and future directions in the application of lipid-coated polymeric nanoparticles for cancer drug delivery.

This review highlights an exciting new field of polymeric nanomedicine research – drug-free macromolecular therapeutics for cell apoptosis induction.

A trigger responsive polymeric therapeutics with defined composition, controlled formulation and release profile, and excellent therapeutic response.

Near-infrared (NIR) light-triggered drug release polymeric nanogels were fabricated based on host–guest interaction and were explored to encapsulate indocyanine green (ICG) and doxorubicin (DOX) for combined photothermal-chemotherapy of cancer.

Multifunctional nanoparticles mediate specific and efficient intracellular doxorubicin delivery to asialoglycoprotein receptor-overexpressing hepatoma cells.

Determining roles of the mixing sequence in nucleic acid/cationic polymer polyplex preparation are reported with experimental characterization and a theoretical model.

Dual-function polycations capable of simultaneously antagonizing CXCR4 receptors and delivering anti-PLK1 siRNA to achieve combination anticancer effect.

Zwitterionic polyphosphoester containing polymers are synthesized and evaluated as an alternative to poly(ethylene glycol) block copolymers for anticancer drug delivery.

This work demonstrates successful delivery of a gene to EGFR-overexpressed cancer cells by using a rationally designed branched GE11 peptide as a targeting ligand.

The synthesis, characterization and property studies of paclitaxel (PTXL)-containing brush polymer–drug conjugates (BPDCs) are presented and the influence of grafting structures of BPDCs on their assembly behaviour, drug release profile and therapeutic effects is discussed in this article.

A pH-reversible polymeric assembly approach was developed to build tunable nanoplatforms, based on the boronate-linked assembly between hyperbranched building blocks.

The penetration of HPMA-based micelles into multicellular tumor spheroids depends on transcellular transport from peripheral to inner cells. Stabilisation by crosslinking facilitated the penetration.