Marine Biopolymer-Based Anticancer Drug Delivery Systems

Abstract

The socioeconomic burden of cancer continues to grow globally, as cancer causes the second highest number of deaths each year, with more than seven million deaths already been reported in 2020. The conventional chemotherapy in cancer has certain limitations like low bioavailability, the high degradation rate of drugs, non-target distribution, systemic toxicity, and resistance of chemotherapeutics in cancer cells. These limitations often lead to treatment failure in cancer therapy. The marine biopolymer-based drug delivery platforms have emerged as a potential strategy to overcome the limitations of conventional chemotherapy strategies. The multifunctionality and versatility of marine biopolymers give them bioresponsive characteristics. They exhibit changes in chain size, shape, dimensions, secondary structures, solubility, intermolecular interactions, etc. in response to numerous physiological stimuli, which plays a significant role in controlled, site-specific, and microenvironment stimuli-triggered release of therapeutic payload from the fabricated delivery platform, thus minimizing the adverse effects of the therapeutic dose, increasing the concentration of the drug reaching the targeted site, and subsequently reducing the dose required for therapeutic effect. This chapter provides a comprehensive review of the role of marine biopolymer in anticancer drug delivery. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022.