Transferrin-bearing dendrimers for cancer therapy: an update

Recent advances in multi-disciplinary research have resulted in the emergence of an increasing number of promising therapeutic strategies against cancer. However, the intravenous administration of these drugs is often limited by their inability to specifically reach the tumors, thus resulting in damaging secondary effects on healthy tissues. In order to remediate to this problem, a wide range of delivery systems have been investigated, aiming to specifically target the cancer cells and deliver their cargo to the pathological site. Among them, transferrin-bearing dendrimers are emerging as highly promising non-viral vectors for efficiently delivering drugs and nucleic acids to the cancer cells. The focus of this editorial is to provide an update on the therapeutic advances being made so far when using these targeted delivery systems.