This study is led by Dr. Rui Yang (Wuxi Maternity and Child Health Care Hospital, Jiangnan University) and Dr. Yanting Shen (Gongli Hospital of Shanghai Pudong New Area).

Numerous organisms in nature have exhibited enhanced biocompatibility, precise tumour targeting, and efficient tissue penetration within the human body.

Drawing inspiration from these organisms, researchers have employed bioengineering, biocoupling, and micro-nano technologies to construct bio-inspired micro-nanostructure systems.

These systems hold immense potential in addressing limited histocompatibility, enhancing permeability, and enabling specific tumour targeting, thereby improving therapeutic outcomes while minimising nonspecific adverse effects on healthy cells.

Consequently, extensive exploration of these bioinspired micro-nanostructured systems has been undertaken across various cancer treatment modalities; some of which have progressed to the preclinical or clinical stage.

However, distinct sources of inspiration and design principles confer unique characteristics upon these systems that influence their progress in laboratory research and clinical translation to a certain extent.

Therefore, it is imperative to comprehensively comprehend the properties of diverse biostimulated micro-nanostructured systems in cancer therapy and elucidate their potential design inspirations and principles.

This will significantly enhance the ability to understand and address challenging scenarios.

Although previous reviews have discussed emerging applications of bioinspired micro- and/or nanostructured systems in biomedical fields, there remains a dearth of comprehensive classification and application analysis for these systems as well as an inadequate discussion regarding their potential for clinical translation.

Biologists have traditionally classified living organisms into three categories - plants, microorganisms, and animals - primarily based on morphological characteristics.

Expanding upon this conventional classification approach, a previous review by Dr. Yang introduced the taxonomy of a novel class of bioinspired nanostructured systems for drug delivery in eye diseases, encompassing plant-inspired, microbial-inspired, and animal-inspired systems.

In this study, Dr. Yang and Dr. Shen extended this classification framework to cancer therapy.

Moreover, drawing inspiration from nature's design principles enables the replication of biological functions and properties found in plants, microorganisms, and animals such as structure, shape dynamics movement variations,and surface features.

Based on these principles, Dr. Yang and Dr. Shen introduced a subclassification system that establishes the first comprehensive taxonomy of bioinspired micro-nanostructures for cancer therapy with groundbreaking implications.

Additionally, Dr. Yang and Dr. Shen present a comprehensive discussion and summary of the current challenges in clinical translation of these systems, along with an exploration of future prospects.

Given the promising anti-cancer results demonstrated in both in vivo and in vitro studies, the utilisation of biostimulated micro-nanostructure systems has emerged as a highly encouraging strategy for cancer treatment.

Several ongoing or completed clinical trials have yielded promising outcomes, leading to the integration of multiple systems into clinical applications.

However, challenges persist in achieving a balance between efficacy and biocompatibility, standardisation and heterogeneity, as well as product development that considers treatment cost and accessibility.

In the future, hybrid nanosystems inspired by diverse kingdoms could be explored; for instance, combining a plant cell membrane with excellent biocompatibility with a human tumour cell membrane possessing inherent tumour targeting capabilities.

Naturally, before such progress can be achieved, establishing a large-scale production process is imperative.

Moreover, ethical considerations associated with employing bioinspired nanomaterials in cancer treatment should not be overlooked; an example being the application of sperm robots in gynaecological oncology.

Lastly, preclinical validation models need to be developed and comprehensively evaluated; currently relying heavily on immunodeficient mice to model human or mouse tumour cells necessitates improved models that better simulate the complexity of organ-, tissue-, and cellular-level interactions within the human body.

See the article: Bioinspired micro- and nanostructured systems for cancer therapy

Source: Sichuan International Medical Exchange and Promotion Association