Metal-Phenolic Networks: Emerging Nanoarchitectures for Cancer Therapy

Cancer is a complicated disease driven by multiple etiologies, necessitating urgent, multimodal, and integrated therapeutic strategies. Coined just over a decade ago, metal-phenolic networks (MPNs) have emerged as broad and powerful platforms, demonstrating great potential in cancer therapy, with broad success achieved in animal models. MPNs are characterized by the network's formation via phenolic ligands and metal ion coordination and serve as versatile drug delivery platforms. Moreover, MPNs not only inherit the inherent pharmacological properties of the building blocks but also acquire new functions during their assembly, including pH responsiveness, photothermal conversion, and redox activity. This review explores the latest advancements and design principles of MPNs in cancer therapy. First, we introduce the building blocks and formation of MPNs and analyze their unique properties and functions. Second, we comprehensively describe various strategies of MPNs in tumor treatment and discuss their potential as a multifunctional treatment platform. Finally, we outline our perspective on the key challenges in translating MPNs to the clinic, with the intention of stimulating the initiation of MPNs-based anti-cancer trials.