Peptide-based drug-delivery systems: A new hope for improving cancer therapy

The usage of Peptide-Based Drug-delivery systems (PBDs) is a strategy in which peptides carry a variety of compounds with pharmacological activity into cells. These innovative drug-delivery systems provide a promising perspective to fight cancer and other diseases, used for diagnosis and treatment. PBDs can be Cell-Penetrating Peptides that translocate across the cell membrane, allowing cargos’ intracellular delivery, and Tumor Homing Peptides which target biomarkers such as overexpressed receptors on tumor cells. PBDs bring groundbreaking advantages in cancer treatment: improved drug delivery and efficacy, decreases toxicity, and high selectivity resulting in lower accumulation on non-target tissues in the case of tumor homing peptides. These peptides are a hope to bring better drugs to fight cancer.