The Applications of Protein Nanomaterials in Cancer Therapies

With the population aging and the development of society, cancer has become the main cause of death and seriously threaten public health, which the burden of cancer has annually increased in the world According to GLOBOCAN 2020 reported by the International Agency for Cancer Statistics (IACS), there are approximately 19.3 million new cancer cases every year in 185 countries and territories. Among them, nearly 10 million patients will be dead from cancer. It estimates that the cases will increase 47 percent in 2040 compared with 2020 [3]. Conventional cancer therapies mainly contain chemotherapy, surgery, radiotherapy and immunotherapy. whereas these methods will produce some adverse events more or less due to off-target effect or inflammatory infections In recent decades, innovations in nanotechnology have promoted drug delivery systems emerging as potential drug carrier candidates for cancer therapies. These nanomaterials could promote drug accumulations in tumor sites and improve through the Enhanced Permeability and Retention (EPR) effect. Additionally, nanomaterials based on protein have well biocompatibility and biological safety. In this work, we will further summary and discuss two aspect's contents which mainly contain non-targeted protein nanomaterials and targeted protein nanomaterials in cancer therapies.