A comprehensive review on the latest advances of dimeric anticancer prodrugs

The advancement of targeted drug delivery systems has opened up a wide array of opportunities in cancer therapy, leading to the exploration of various strategies. Among these, the use of prodrugs stands out as a particularly promising approach in targeted cancer treatment, aimed at enhancing the selectivity and effectiveness of cytotoxic agents. In the last few years, there has been considerable progress in the area of dimeric-based prodrugs aimed at cancer therapy. The advantages presented by dimeric-based prodrugs have significantly improved the efficiency of delivering anticancer drugs, characterized by a high drug loading capacity, advantageous pharmacokinetics, and drug release that responds to tumor stimuli. With respect to the importance of drug dimerization in the field of prodrug development, herein we review the latest reports covering research in dimeric prodrugs. We have categorized the article according to the reported anticancer agents. We have also spent a great deal of attention on different types of used linkers and methods of the dissociation of dimeric prodrugs into free monomeric drugs. Readers will easily be able to compare between the reported research using the same drugs with different linkers or different dissociation methods as well as different cancer cell lines targeted in the studies.