In the last decade, considerable attention has been devoted to the use of biodegradable polymeric materials as potential drug delivery carriers. However, bioavailability and drug release at the disease site remain uncontrollable even with the use of polymeric nanocarriers. To address this issue, successful methodologies have been developed to synthesize polymeric nanocarriers incorporated with regions exhibiting a response to stimuli such as redox potential, temperature, pH, and light. The resultant stimuli-responsive polymeric nanocarriers have shown tremendous promise in drug delivery applications, owing to their ability to enhance the bioavailability of drugs at the disease site. In such systems, drug release is controlled in response to specific stimuli, either exogenous or endogenous. This review reports recent advances in the design of stimuli-responsive nanocarriers for drug delivery in cancer therapy. In particular, the synthetic methodologies investigated to date to introduce different types of stimuli-responsive elements within the biomaterials are described. The sufficient understanding of these stimuli-responsive nanocarriers will allow the development of a better drug delivery system that will allow us to solve the challenges encountered in targeted cancer therapy.

在过去的十年中，人们对使用可生物降解的聚合物材料作为潜在的药物输送载体给予了相当多的关注。然而，即使使用聚合物纳米载体，疾病部位的生物利用度和药物释放仍然无法控制。为了解决这个问题，已经开发出成功的方法来合成聚合物纳米载体，其中包含对氧化还原电位、温度、pH 和光等刺激做出响应的区域。由此产生的刺激响应聚合物纳米载体在药物输送应用中显示出巨大的前景，因为它们能够增强药物在疾病部位的生物利用度。在此类系统中，药物释放是根据外源或内源的特定刺激来控制的。这篇综述报告了用于癌症治疗药物输送的刺激响应纳米载体设计的最新进展。特别是，描述了迄今为止研究的在生物材料中引入不同类型的刺激响应元素的合成方法。对这些刺激响应纳米载体的充分了解将有助于开发更好的药物输送系统，使我们能够解决靶向癌症治疗中遇到的挑战。