Engineering extracellular matrix to improve drug delivery for cancer therapy

Abstract

As an effective platform to deliver therapeutic drugs into tumors, nanoparticles (NPs) have shown great potential for cancer therapy. However, the tumor microenvironment (TME) contains diverse barriers to the transport of NPs, particularly the dense extracellular matrix (ECM). Thus, engineering the tumor ECM is a promising way to improve drug delivery by degrading existing ECM and/or blocking ECM synthesis. In this review, we present the state-of-the-art advances in engineering the tumor ECM to improve the therapeutic efficacy of NPs, and highlight their advantages and limitations.