• Advances in nanomedicine to treat cancer-induced starvation
  • Najme Janghorban,1 Amirreza Jokar,2 Seyed vafa hosseini,3 Afshin Karimirad,4 Parsa Hasanabadi,5 Amin Hajhosseini,6,*
    1. Student Research Committee, Ahvaz Jondishapur University of Medical Sciences, Ahvaz, Iran.
    2. Student Research Committee, Shiraz University of Medical Science, Shiraz, Iran.
    3. Student Research Committee, Jiroft University of Medical Sciences, Kerman, Iran.
    4. Student Research Committee, Hormozgan University of Medical Sciences, Bandar Abbas, Iran.
    5. Student Research Committee, Kurdistan University of Medical Sciences Sanandaj, Iran
    6. Student Research Committee, Bushehr University of Medical Sciences, Bushehr, Iran


  • Introduction: Cancer cells are distinguished from normal cells by high consumption of food and intense metabolism. One of the important advances in the field of nanomedicine is the treatment of starvation caused by cancer, which prevents angiogenesis and blood supply or consumes the glucose present in the cancerous mass. However, the use of nanomedicine in the treatment of this hunger has disadvantages such as low effectiveness, off-target toxicity, drug resistance, increased risk of metastasis, etc. In this study, we examine the studies conducted in the field of combining cancer starvation and nanotechnology.
  • Methods: In this review article, we collected the required data using keywords and using databases such as Google Scholar, PubMed, Scopus and ProQuest. In this study, the statistical population includes all the studies whose articles have been published until 2022. After reviewing the findings and evaluating the quality of the obtained data, 13 articles were analyzed.
  • Results: The combination of different types of drug delivery systems based on nanomaterials such as micelles, liposomes and dendrimers, with glycolytic enzyme inhibitors and glucose transporter inhibitors, anti-angiogenic drugs, GOX and CAT can be a more effective treatment. Glucose oxidase (GOx) has attracted more attention as glucose biosensors, which can oxidize glucose to gluconic acid and H2O2. According to a previous report, H2O2 at endogenous concentrations can induce malignant transformation of normal cells, but in turn leads to the death of cancer cells at high concentrations. Therefore, the use of GOx in tumor therapy not only consumes intracellular glucose, but also leads to the interruption of energy supply, but also raises the level of endogenous H2O2, causing stronger intratumoral cytotoxicity. But the problem with this approach is that glucose starvation strategies usually affect both cancer cells and normal cells at the same time, secondly, cancer cells can resist a metabolic pathway by expressing alternative isoforms of the causative drug, called metabolomics. Special resistance.
  • Conclusion: Studies show that the combination of nanotechnology and cancer starvation with accurate drug delivery to the target tissue is a promising method to overcome the mentioned problems. Therefore, combining common cancer methods such as immunotherapy chemotherapy with nanotechnology can increase the effectiveness of the mentioned methods. However, off-target toxicity, metabolic plasticity and potential toxicity with nanoparticles still exist and require further studies.
  • Keywords: nanomedicine, cancer starvation therapy, Combined Modality Therapy, nanomaterials