Cancer has thwarted as a major health problem affecting the global population. With an alarming increase in the patient population suffering from diverse varieties of cancers, the global demographic data predicts sharp escalation in the number of cancer patients. This can be expected to reach 420 million cases by 2025. Among the diverse types of cancers, the most frequently diagnosed cancers are the breast, colorectal, prostate and lung cancer. From years, conventional treatment approaches like surgery, chemotherapy and radiation therapy have been practiced. In the past few years, increasing research on molecular level diagnosis and treatment of cancers have significantly changed the realm of cancer treatment. Lately, uses of advanced chemotherapy and immunotherapy like treatments have gained significant progress in the cancer therapy, but these approaches have several limitations on their safety and toxicity. This has generated lot of momentum for the evolution of new drug delivery approaches for the effective delivery of anticancer therapeutics, which may improve the pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic effect of the drugs along with significant reduction in the side effects. In this regard, the protein-based nano-medicines have gained wider attention in the management of cancer. Proteins are organic macromolecules essential, for life and have quite well explored in developing the nano-carriers. Furthermore, it provides passive or active tumour cell targeted delivery, by using protein based nanovesicles or virus like structures, antibody drug conjugates, viral particles, etc. Moreover, by utilizing various formulation strategies, both the animal and plant derived proteins can be converted to produce self-assembled virus like nano-metric structures with high efficiency in targeting the metastatic cancer cells. Therefore, the present review extensively discusses the applications of protein-based nano-medicine with special emphasis on intracellular delivery/drug targeting ability for anticancer drugs.

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蛋白质衍生的纳米药物作为抗癌治疗剂的出现：不仅仅是一个杰作。

癌症已成为影响全球人口的主要健康问题。随着患有各种癌症的患者人数惊人地增加，全球人口统计数据预测癌症患者人数将急剧增加。预计到 2025 年，这一数字将达到 4.2 亿例。在多种癌症中，最常被诊断出的癌症是乳腺癌、结直肠癌、前列腺癌和肺癌。多年来，传统的治疗方法，如手术、化学疗法和放射疗法已经得到实践。近年来，随着对癌症分子水平诊治研究的不断深入，癌症治疗领域发生了重大变化。最近，使用先进的化学疗法和免疫疗法之类的疗法在癌症治疗中取得了重大进展，但这些方法在安全性和毒性方面存在一些局限性。这为有效递送抗癌药物的新药物递送方法的发展产生了很大的动力，这可能会改善药物的药代动力学和药效学效果，同时显着减少副作用。在这方面，基于蛋白质的纳米药物在癌症治疗中得到了更广泛的关注。蛋白质是生命所必需的有机大分子，在开发纳米载体方面进行了很好的探索。此外，它通过使用基于蛋白质的纳米囊泡或病毒样结构、抗体药物偶联物、病毒颗粒等提供被动或主动肿瘤细胞靶向递送。此外，通过利用各种制剂策略，动物和植物来源的蛋白质都可以转化为自组装病毒状纳米结构，高效靶向转移性癌细胞。因此，本综述广泛讨论了基于蛋白质的纳米药物的应用，特别强调了抗癌药物的细胞内递送/药物靶向能力。