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Cancer treatments are advancing to harness the body’s immune system against tumours, aiming for lasting effects. This progress involves combining potent chemotherapy drugs with immunogens to kill cancer cells and trigger lasting immunity. Developing new prodrugs that integrate both chemotherapy and immune-boosting elements could significantly improve anticancer outcomes by activating multiple mechanisms to kill cancer cells. While bacterial polysaccharides are typically not used in therapy due to their immune-stimulating properties, we propose a safe application of an extremophilic bacterial polysaccharide, Mauran (MR), modified with the anticancer drug 5-fluorouracil (5FU) to create a novel prodrug. This obtained prodrug, chloracetyl-MR-5FU, is specifically targeted using gold nanocages to CD133+ glioma cells. Test results have shown a high encapsulation efficiency of the drug during the polysaccharide modification process; its anticancer activity was demonstrated in vitro and the release of the prodrug was demonstrated in ex vivo studies.

Biodegradable polymers are popularly being used in an increasing number of fields in the past few decades. The popularity and favorability of these materials are due to their remarkable properties, enabling a wide range of applications and market requirements to be met. Polymer biodegradable systems are a promising arena of research for targeted and site-specific controlled drug delivery, for developing artificial limbs, 3D porous scaffolds for cellular regeneration or tissue engineering and biosensing applications. Several natural polymers have been identified, blended, functionalized and applied for designing nanoscaffolds and drug carriers as a prerequisite for enumerable bionano technological applications. Apart from these, natural polymers have been well studied and are widely used in material science and industrial fields. The present review explains the prominent features of commonly used natural polymers (polysaccharides and proteins) in various nanomedical applications and reveals the current status of the polymer research in bionanotechnology and science sectors.