Nanomedicine Solutions for Overcoming Cancer Drug Resistance

Cancer drug resistance remains a major barrier to effective chemotherapy and contributes to treatment failure and disease relapse. Nanomedicine applies nanoscale delivery platforms—such as liposomes, polymeric nanoparticles, micelles, dendrimers and exosome-mimetic vesicles—to enhance drug accumulation at tumour sites, evade cellular defences and modulate the tumour microenvironment. By co-encapsulating synergistic agents or combining chemotherapeutics with gene silencers, these systems can bypass efflux pumps, inhibit survival pathways and release payloads in response to local stimuli (for example pH or redox gradients). Surface functionalisation with targeting ligands or stealth polymers prolongs circulation, improves selectivity and reduces systemic toxicity. Integrating diagnostic reporters further enables real-time assessment of treatment response. Together, these approaches aim to convert resistant tumours into chemosensitive ones, expanding therapeutic windows and advancing personalised oncology on a global scale.

Research from Nature Portfolio

Recent studies have demonstrated that co-delivery of a chemosensitiser and a cytotoxic agent within a sub-100 nm PEGylated liposome can reverse multidrug resistance in breast cancer models. The co-encapsulated resveratrol and paclitaxel formulation achieved enhanced intratumoural retention, evaded P-glycoprotein-mediated efflux and restored cytotoxicity without increasing systemic toxicity. Another innovative platform developed a bioorthogonal, caspase-activatable imaging precursor that, upon enzymatic cleavage in apoptotic cells, generates surface azido groups for click-chemistry labelling, allowing direct visualisation of tumour cell death and rapid evaluation of nanotherapeutic efficacy in vivo.

Nanomedicine Solutions for Overcoming Cancer Drug Resistance publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in nanomedicine solutions for overcoming cancer drug resistance across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Nanocarrier: A nanoscale vehicle engineered to deliver therapeutic agents specifically to tumour cells.

Liposome: A spherical vesicle composed of a phospholipid bilayer used to encapsulate and transport drugs.

Efflux pump: A membrane protein that actively expels chemotherapeutic drugs from cancer cells, reducing intracellular drug levels.

PEGylation: Covalent attachment of polyethylene glycol to particles or drugs to enhance stability and prolong circulation time.

Enhanced permeability and retention (EPR) effect: Preferential accumulation of nanoparticles in tumour tissue owing to leaky vasculature and impaired lymphatic drainage.

Stimuli-responsive polymer: A material that undergoes controlled changes in response to environmental cues such as pH, temperature or redox potential.

References

1. Drug repurposing for cancer therapy. Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy (2024).
2. Nanodrug delivery in reversing multidrug resistance in cancer cells. Frontiers in Pharmacology (2014).
3. Combination Therapy using Co-encapsulated Resveratrol and Paclitaxel in Liposomes for Drug Resistance Reversal in Breast Cancer Cells in vivo. Scientific Reports (2016).
4. Caspase-3/-7-Specific Metabolic Precursor for Bioorthogonal Tracking of Tumor Apoptosis. Scientific Reports (2017).
5. Novel Tumor-Targeting Nanoparticles for Cancer Treatment—A Review. International Journal of Molecular Sciences (2022).
6. Recent advances in anti-multidrug resistance for nano-drug delivery system. Drug Delivery (2022).