Combination antitumor therapy with targeted dual-nanomedicines

Combination therapy is one of the important treatment strategies for cancer at present. However, the outcome of current combination therapy based on the co-administration of conventional dosage forms is suboptimal, due to the short half-lives of chemodrugs, their deficient tumor selectivity and so forth. Nanotechnology-based targeted delivery systems show great promise in addressing the associated problems and providing superior therapeutic benefits. In this review, we focus on the combination of therapeutic strategies between different nanomedicines or drug-loaded nanocarriers, rather than the co-delivery of different drugs via a single nanocarrier. We introduce the general concept of various targeting strategies of nanomedicines, present the principles of combination antitumor therapy with dual-nanomedicines, analyze their advantages and limitations compared with co-delivery strategies, and overview the recent advances of combination therapy based on targeted nanomedicines. Finally, we reviewed the challenges and future perspectives regarding the selection of therapeutic agents, targeting efficiency and the gap between the preclinical and clinical outcome.