Challenges and Opportunities of Nanomedicine: Novel Comprehensive Approaches for Brain Metastasis

Brain metastasis is the leading cause of death in most cancer patients; thus, anti-brain metastasis is a crucial step in cancer treatment. The unique microenvironment and pathophysiological characteristics of brain metastases hamper the development of effective treatment methods, while the advances in nanomedicine demonstrate its immense potential for addressing this challenge. In recent years, due to breakthroughs in nanotechnology, functional and complex nanomedicine is prepared and it has been extensively explored to improve the treatment of brain metastasis. Compared to traditional treatment methods, nanomedicine can combine multiple traditional treatment methods into one single medicinal format and target unique characteristics of brain metastases to enhance the treatment efficacy. This review summarizes the main obstacles in the field of brain metastasis treatment and clinical/preclinical studies and surveys the use of a variety of nanomedicine candidates as antibrain metastasis strategies for different types of brain metastases. A comprehensive review discusses how the unique microenvironment and pathophysiological characteristics of brain metastases pose significant challenges to the development of effective treatments and explore how nanomedicine can address these challenges. The review provides an overview of the different types of brain metastases and advances in multifunctional nanomedicine as a promising approach to improve treatment and antimetastatic efficacy.image (c) 2023 WILEY-VCH GmbH