Nanoscale metal–organic frameworks as smart nanocarriers for cancer therapy

Cancer is one of the serious diseases to human life. Early and precise cancer diagnosis and timely therapy are in urgent need nowadays. Due to the advantages of porous structures and tunable properties, metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) are becoming type of rapidly developing and attractive supports used in biomedicine, which have been widely applied in the fields of chemistry, biology, materials science, etc. Particularly, nanoscale MOFs (nMOFs) with more accessible active sites and improved stability are ideal platforms for biological and clinical applications in vitro and in vivo. This review article summarizes the recent progresses in nMOFs based nanoplatforms for drug delivery and cancer therapy. Different techniques using nMOFs are systematically summarized including chemotherapy, photodynamic therapy (PDT), photothermal therapy (PTT), chemodynamic therapy (CDT), radiotherapy (RT), and the combined therapy methods. Finally, a brief conclusion and outlook for biomedical applications of this special field is provided. We expect this review could be helpful for future designing and fabrication of multi-functional nMOFs platforms for drug delivery, disease therapy, and other biomedical applications.

癌症是威胁人类生命的严重疾病之一。如今，癌症的早期精确诊断和及时治疗迫在眉睫。由于具有多孔结构和可调节特性等优势，金属 - 有机框架（MOFs）正成为生物医学中一类快速发展且极具吸引力的载体，已广泛应用于化学、生物学、材料科学等领域。特别是具有更多可及活性位点和更高稳定性的纳米级MOFs（nMOFs），是体外和体内生物及临床应用的理想平台。这篇综述文章总结了基于nMOFs的纳米平台在药物递送和癌症治疗方面的最新进展。系统总结了使用nMOFs的不同技术，包括化疗、光动力疗法（PDT）、光热疗法（PTT）、化学动力学疗法（CDT）、放射疗法（RT）以及联合治疗方法。最后，对这一特殊领域的生物医学应用进行了简要总结和展望。我们期望这篇综述对未来多功能nMOFs药物递送、疾病治疗及其他生物医学应用平台的设计和构建有所帮助。