Colloidal nanomedicine approaches for regulating cell death mechanisms in tumours

Colloidal nanomedicine has emerged as a promising therapeutic strategy in cancer treatment, enabling the precise modulation of multiple regulated cell death pathways to improve therapeutic efficacy and overcome treatment resistance. This review underscores how advanced nanocarriers can be used to regulate apoptosis, autophagy, ferroptosis, necroptosis, and pyroptosis to overcome tumor resistance and enhance their therapeutic efficacy. Liposomes, polymeric nanoparticles (NPs), and hybrid nanostructures are examples of colloidal systems, which are found to be more stable in the tumor microenvironment, deliver drugs in a targeted manner, and release drugs in a controlled manner. Their tunable physicochemical characteristics and capacity to take advantage of both passive and active targeting processes greatly enhance tumor accumulation and reduce systemic toxicity. Additionally, nanomedicine makes it possible to combine therapies by co-delivering chemotherapeutics, nucleic acids, and immunomodulators to overcome multidrug resistance (MDR) and augment immunogenic cell death (ICD). Effective clinical translation of colloidal nanomedicine is hindered by biological hurdles, safety concerns, manufacturing scalability, regulatory complexity, and batch-to-batch repeatability, despite encouraging preclinical results and rising clinical evidence. The effective clinical translation of cancer treatments based on nanomedicine depends on overcoming these obstacles. In this review, we take a different approach than earlier ones by bringing together topics such as tumor immunology, scalable manufacturing, future clinical implementation, molecular mechanisms of programmed cell death, and colloidal nanocarrier engineering to provide a comprehensive roadmap for the creation of next-generation precision nanomedicines.