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Abstract
Cancer drug delivery achieving high therapeutic efficacy and low side effects requires
a nanocarrier to tightly retain the drug, efficiently reach the tumor, then quickly
enter the tumor cells and release the drug. Furthermore, the nanocarrier intended
for clinical applications should use materials safe as pharmaceutical excipients and
its formulation (nanomedicine) should have good manufacture processes with scale-up
ability. Thus, the challenge is to design safe, approvable, and easily scaled-up nanocarriers
that simultaneously meet the two pairs of requirements of 'drug retention in circulation
versus intracellular release' and 'stealthy in circulation versus sticky (cell-binding)
in tumor' at the right places in order to deliver a cytosolic drug dose lethal to
cancer cells with minimized side effects. Herein, we briefly review these elements
aimed at promoting developments of translational nanocarriers.