Drug self-delivery systems for cancer therapy

Carrier-assistant drug delivery systems (DDSs) have been rapidly established for cancer therapy and great strides have been made in recent years. However, further development of DDSs is retarded by the aspects such as the low drug carrying capacity, carrier-induced toxicity and immunogenicity, complex synthesis manipulation. Drug self-delivery systems (DSDSs), in which active drugs exhibit nanoscale characteristic to realize intracellular delivery by themselves without the help of nanocarriers, have been rapidly developed to address these issues. In this review, we present a comprehensive summary of the recent advances in DSDSs for cancer therapy. After a brief introduction to the major types of DSDSs and their fabrication strategies, we emphatically discuss some representative achievements of these DSDSs for passive or/and positive targeting therapy, combinational therapy as well as theranostics. The design principle is explained and justified, which can cast a new light on developing drug delivery systems for cancer treatments.