Nanoparticle-assisted combination therapies for effective cancer treatment

Combination chemotherapy and nanoparticle drug delivery are two areas that have shown significant promise in cancer treatment. Combined therapy of two or more drugs promotes synergism among the different drugs against cancer cells and suppresses drug resistance through distinct mechanisms of action. Nanoparticle drug delivery, on the other hand, enhances therapeutic effectiveness and reduces side effects of the drug payloads by improving their pharmacokinetics. These two active research fields have been recently merged to further improve the efficacy of cancer therapeutics. This review article summarizes the recent efforts in developing nanoparticle platforms to concurrently deliver multiple types of drugs for combination chemotherapy. We also highlight the challenges and design specifications that need to be considered in optimizing nanoparticle-based combination chemotherapy.