Vitamin E TPGS based Nanomedicine for Multimodality Treatment of Cancer

Abstract

Cancer is a leading disease for mortality. In the past 30 years, the standard treatments have been surgery followed by radiotherapy and/or chemotherapy. If they fail, patients have a less than 10% chance of survival with other treatments. None of the existing single modality treatments, such as chemotherapy, radiotherapy, hyperthermia therapy, immunotherapy, anti-angiogenesis therapy or gene therapy can cure cancer. It is also unlikely that any magic anticancer drug can be discovered in the next few years to completely cure cancer, since the problems in drug delivery would always be there. Instead, multimodality treatment can do an excellent job, superior to any single modality treatment in current practice. Multimodality treatment has been investigated for their synergistic effects that may dramatically improve outcomes and reduce the side effects of each single modality treatment. To better achieve the multimodality treatment of cancer, nanomedicine can provide a fantastic platform for multimodality treatment.