Electrospun nanocarriers for delivering natural products for cancer therapy

Electrospinning has provided an excellent opportunity to develop nano-sized fibers with a broad range of applications, including nano-drug delivery systems for the treatment of cancer. This versatile and viable technique involves using various polymer solutions, strong electric fields to generate nanofibers with high surface area, high porosity, abundant pore connectivity, and distinct chemical compositions. On the other hand, natural products-based drugs show excellent results in preclinical settings but fail in a clinical setting due to poor pharmacokinetics, low solubility, high toxicity, and lack of targetability. Due to the remarkable properties of nanofibers, it opened new doors in the nanomedicine field to introduce novel nanofiber-based formulations for natural products delivery applications. The present review describes the needle-based and needleless methods for the preparation of nanofibers. It summarizes the major application of these methods to formulate mostly investigated natural products in cancer therapy, like taxanes, curcumin, resveratrol, camptothecin, and doxorubicin. In summary, this review may help scientists to develop more efficient natural product-based nanofibers with improved pharmacokinetic properties for the effective treatment of cancer. Scientists used recent advances in nanotechnology to develop natural products loaded with electrospun nanocarriers to treat cancer therapy. They succeeded in preparing with high encapsulation and sustained slow release of several natural products, including curcumin, vinca alkaloids, taxanes, camptothecin, anthracyclins, etc. These nanocarriers demonstrated vast advantages over other delivery systems, including higher stability and improved bioavailability. Although several reports on the successful application of electrospinning for the delivery of natural compounds for cancer therapy, further developments towards commercialization and large scale-production need more optimization.