Triple-negative breast cancer treatment meets nanoparticles: Current status and future direction

Among women suffering from cancer, breast cancer (BC) is the major reason of their undertaken disease burden, and that of their death. Although targeted therapies seem effective in some of BC subtypes, estrogen, progesterone, and HER 2 positives ones, until recently there is no effective targeted therapy for the type tested negative for all those three receptors, namely triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC). The path to treat such unmet concern seems to be going through the nano delivery systems with or without conventional chemotherapies, along with the attached targeting moieties. Reduced size, manipulated structure, and tumor site drug release are the advantages of nanotherapies. In this review, antibody-drug conjugate and a myriad of carriers including polymeric nanoparticles (NP), metallic NPs, liposomes, dendrimers, and layer by layer NPs with individual targeting moieties are discussed. Moreover, some of the pathogenic pathways and the meachanism/s through which these pathways are blocked by the targeted NPs are highlighted.