Recent advances in delivery of photosensitive metal-based drugs

Metal-based drugs have drawn significant attention over the past few decades due to their advanced properties and benefits in biomedical therapeutic and diagnostic systems. Among those, phototherapy using photosensitive metal-based drugs is of particular interest to researchers since the combination of light with metallo drugs allows controlled, light-activated release of anti-disease compounds with tremendous clinical significance. Due to its promising prospectives, especially in cancer treatment, numerous drug delivery carriers, including polymer nanoparticles, solid lipid, and inorganic nanoparticles, were developed for delivering photosensitive metal-based drugs. This review presents a comprehensive overview on recent advances of the controlled delivery of photosensitive metal-based drugs. Every aspect of novel polymer-based photosensitive metal-based drug delivery systems, including their fabrication methods, mechanism of action, applications in cancer therapy, as well as the prospect of future development is discussed in detail. It can be promisingly envisioned that the future direction of drug delivery systems with photosensitive metal-based drugs will result in a new generation of clinical and translational medicines combined with the rapid progression of targeted therapy, gene therapy, and immunotherapy. (C) 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.