Nanomedicine for Challenging Solid Tumors: Recent Trends and Future Ahead

From the last two decades, many technological inventions and high-end equipment are available for cancer detection, diagnosis, and treatment modalities. However, the complete cure for cancer is not possible till date. Effectiveness of the treatment depends on the tumor size, lymph node involvement, and distant metastasis. Recent chemotherapeutic drugs have improved therapy but the problems of inability to reach tumor site, crossing of BBB at effective doses, toxicity, and poor pharmacokinetics still persists. The advanced-stage tumors are aggressive and existing chemotherapeutics are not effective, possess side effects, and recovery is not possible. The mode of management for metastatic tumors is fairly dependent on the available treatments; however, in solid tumors, they are much more dependent on the type of biomarkers and their expression pattern which can serve as diagnostic, predictive, and prognostic markers. The novel nano approaches used in treatment modalities for solid tumors are also discussed.