A judicious review on the applications of chemotherapeutic loaded nanoemulsions in cancer management

The escalating prevalence of cancer, a condition in which uncontrolled cell growth leads to complications and tissue failure, is one of the major concerns of healthcare professionals. The incompetence of the cytotoxic class of drugs to distinguish between the abnormally proliferating malignant cell mass and the quickly dividing healthy cells of the human body is one of their most catchy adverse effects. The increasing incidences of tumor cells resistant to conventional therapies such as chemotherapy and radiotherapy emphasize the critical need for anticancer drug delivery modalities. Among the devised nanocarriers, nanoemulsions are currently being envisaged as an effective drug delivery approach for an array of chemotherapeutics because of their unique attributes such as biodegradability, biocompatibility, nanometric size range with large surface area, optical clarity, non-immunogenicity, sustained-release behavior, ease of formulation and thermodynamic stability. As nanoemulsions are submicron emulsions with droplet sizes in the colloidal dispersion range, they have the added benefit of bypassing the anatomical and physiological constraints for drug delivery in the complex architecture of cancerous cells. Surface modification of nanoemulsions with targeting ligands, cell-penetrating components, stimuli-sensitive moieties, and fluorescent dye with a core capable of entrapping drugs, contrast agents, and imaging agents make it a smart nanocarrier and an apt choice among researchers from various domains to research upon. This review aims to furnish new insight on the application of nanoemulsions in cancer therapeutics. It also presents a list of challenges associated with the clinical translation of a nanoformulation.