Nanoparticulate carriers: an emerging tool for breast cancer therapy

Breast cancer is a leading cause of death for women in the world. Cancer has the potential to spread to different organs around the body, and form metastases that can even develop after surgical removal of the primary tumour. Nanotechnology offers new promising strategies for the treatment of breast cancer, and has emerged as a powerful tool for fighting cancer. Nanoparticles can be fabricated to perform more than one task simultaneously, and can have a number of roles, such as acting as a therapeutic agent, drug delivery vehicle and/or tumour imaging agent. This review will focus on various forms of nanoparticles serving as potential agents for cancer therapeutics, illustrating their use in breast cancer therapies. This article also highlights the properties, current progress in the design and engineering of nanoparticles.