Phytochemical based nanomedicine: a panacea for cancer treatment, present status and future prospective

Cancer is one of the leading causes of mortality worldwide. Currently available anticancer therapeutic strategies are not able to improve the survival rate of patients over the past few decades. Research suggests that cancer cells develop multidrug resistance (MDR) against chemotherapeutics that lead to enhanced proliferation, epithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT), invasion and metastasis. Hence, there is an urgent need for an alternative strategy to treat this disease. Recently, phytochemicals have gained immense attention as a promising anticancer agent by targeting multimodal oncogenic pathways, inducing cell cycle arrest and apoptosis in preclinical studies. However, their clinical application is limited due to poor aqueous solubility, poor bioavailability, low cellular uptake and narrow therapeutic index. Therefore, to address these challenges, phytochemical-based nanomedicine i.e. phytonanomedicine have been developed that can improve pharmacokinetics profile in in vivo systems. In this review, we aim to summarize challenges in cancer treatment and the status of phytonanomedicine for effective cancer treatment in preclinical and clinical studies.