One of the most important health problems in the world today is cancer. The World Health Organization (WHO) reported that it results in 8.9 million deaths annually. Malignant tumours and unregulated cell proliferation are features of malignant neoplasms, which can also invade nearby body regions. Hepatocellular carcinoma is the third most prevalent cause of cancer-related death worldwide and the fifth most common kind of cancer, according to a recent analysis. Patients with liver disease as well as chronic hepatitis B and C are more likely to develop hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Physical barriers, including RES absorption, opsonization, and first-pass drug metabolism, make drug therapy more challenging. Conventional cancer therapy procedures have a low response rate or may continue to be unsuccessful due to multi-drug resistance (MDR), high clearance rates, and other side effects because of suboptimal drug distribution and insufficient drug concentration reaching cancer cells. Innovative target drug molecules that are tailored to the injured liver cells must be developed in order to improve medication administration and drug targeting. The use of targeting ligands that have been joined to drug molecules or nanocarriers forms the basis of innovative targeting techniques. After being conjugated with the treatment method, ligands for targeting hepatocellular carcinoma cells included asialoglycoprotein, galactoside, lactobionic acid, mannose-6-phosphate, PDGF, antibodies, and aptamers.
Keywords: Hepatocellular carcinoma; MDR; cancer; ligands; nanocarrier; tumor targeting.
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