Pulmonary multifunctional nano-oncological modules for lung cancer treatment and prevention.

Mortality associated with lung cancer and its metastasis has outnumbered those related to other forms of cancer. Despite being a directly accessible organ, conventional oncological strategies exhibiting prolific outcome in treatment and prevention of lung cancer is far from reality. This is attributed to numerous challenges posed by lung environment. The extracellular aura of lung comprises immensely complicated structures, ciliary escalators, omnipresence of mucus and alveolar fluid, and macrophagial uptake which presents an array of impediments to the arrival of therapeutic moiety at the tumor site. Besides these, intracellular obstacles viz enzymatic degradation, cell membrane translocation, endosomal escape and/or nuclear entry also limit superior therapeutic efficacy. The current review elaborates wide-ranging challenges to lung cancer treatment and its circumvention by latest developments in multifunctional nano-oncological modules delivered via the pulmonary route-which smartly deal with the abovementioned issues and bestow positivity to this complication.