Carbon Nanotubes in Tumor-Targeted Chemotherapeutic Formulations: A Review of Opportunities and Challenges

The research of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) has contributed to basic science and is playing leading roles in potential applications, including nanomedicine. In particular, CNTs have been proposed as nanocarriers for cancer therapeutics. This study reviews the advantages and potential challenges of using CNTs in chemotherapy drug-delivery formulations. We mainly focus on tumor-targeted systems prepared with hyaluronic acid and folic acid because of their biocompatibility, low cost, ease of conjugation to targeting agents, and specificity for pathologic cells. The relevance of these CNTs-based tumor-targeted drug-delivery systems is discussed for cisplatin, carboplatin, doxorubicin, gemcitabine, salinomycin, chlorin e6, and paclitaxel. An extensive and diversified list of methodologies for preparing these drug-delivery systems provides a rationale for definite protocols to attain comparability between conjugates prepared from different formulations. Hence, the scope of various CNTs-based tumor-targeted drug-delivery systems was reviewed from a perspective relating to the opportunities of using CNTs in chemotherapeutics and the challenges associated with developing formulations for human use.