Abstract

Cancer is the leading cause of death worldwide though it can be treated by the common ways of chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and surgery. The major limitation of conventional chemotherapy is the non-selective action of chemotherapeutic agents which leads to serious side effects such as damage to normal cells that hampers the immunity of the patient to fight against the disease. Active targeting mechanism is one of the approaches through which a chemotherapeutic agent can be delivered to malignant cells more selectively to the tumor-specific tissue with the help of ligands including proteins, peptides, hyaluronic acid, folic acid, antibodies, antibody fragments, aptamer, carbohydrates, and polysaccharides, etc. Folic acid conjugated nano systems have proved their efficiency in sitespecific targeting of chemotherapeutic agents with reduced side effects as folic acid has an affinity for folate receptors which are overexpressed on several cancer cell surfaces. Various polymers have been utilized to prepare such nanomicelles in an active targeting approach including chitosan, Poly lactic-co-glycolic acid, alginates, human serum albumin, etc. In this review, active targeted nano systems of vincristine, methotrexate, mitoxantrone, doxorubicin, genistein, 5-aminovalaevulinic acid (5-ALA), carboplatin, 6-mercaptopurine, and gemcitabine, kaempferitrin, curcumin, paclitaxel, saquinavir, 5-Flurouracil, tamoxifen, resveratrol, isoalantolactone, and cabazitaxel were discussed which are successfully prepared using various polymers.

Keywords: Folic acid Conjugates; Folate receptor targeted systems; Polymeric nano systems; Active targeted nano systems; Chitosan; PLGA; Alginates; Human Serum Albumin