Recently, magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) have more and more often been used in experimental studies on cancer treatments, which have become one of the biggest challenges in medical research. The main goal of this research is to treat and to cure advanced or metastatic cancer with minimal side effects through nanotechnology. Drug delivery approaches take into account the fact that MNPs can be bonded to chemotherapeutical drugs, nucleic acids, synthetized antibodies or radionuclide substances. MNPs can be guided, and different treatment therapies can be applied, under the influence of an external magnetic field. This paper reviews the main MNPs' synthesis methods, functionalization with different materials and highlight the applications in cancer therapy. In this review, we describe cancer cell monitorization based on different types of magnetic nanoparticles, chemotherapy, immunotherapy, magnetic hyperthermia, gene therapy and ferroptosis. Examples of applied treatments on murine models or humans are analyzed, and glioblastoma cancer therapy is detailed in the review. MNPs have an important contribution to diagnostics, investigation, and therapy in the so called theranostics domain. The main conclusion of this paper is that MNPs are very useful in different cancer therapies, with limited side effects, and they can increase the life expectancy of patients with cancer drug resistance.
Keywords: cancer therapy; drug delivery; ferroptosis; glioblastoma; magnetic hyperthermia; magnetic nanoparticles; radiosensitizing properties.