Potential of multifunctional electrospun nanofibers in cancer management

Abstract

A controlled and sustained release of drugs is much more desirable and beneficial when dealing with cancer, as such drugs also harm normal cells. Available anticancer drugs used in chemotherapy are associated with severe side effects due to high dosage requirements. Electrospun nanofibers have an extensive surface area, controllable pore size, and tunable drug release profiles, which make these nanofibers promising candidates in the medical field. Electrospun fibrous matrices are increasingly used in cancer research as patches for drug delivery in living organisms and as scaffolds for cancer modeling in the lab. Towards these applications, nanofibers synthesized by electrospinning have exhibited great clinical potential as a biomimetic tumor microenvironment model for drug screening, a controllable platform for localized, prolonged drug release for cancer therapy, and a human cancer diagnostic tool for capture and isolation of circulating tumor cells in the bloodstream and detection of cancer-associated biomarkers. This review briefly describes most of the materials used in electrospinning. Then, we discuss two ways that electrospinning is used to fight cancer: first, as patches with anticancer agents for therapeutic cargo delivery, and second, as three-dimensional fiber for filtering and detecting cancers.