The last decade witnessed the great advances in the development of nanomedicines. As a kind of attractive nanomedicine, carrier-free nanomedicines received extensive investigations because of their high biosafety, high drug loading capacities, simple drug compositions and simplified synthetic procedures. Extensive efforts have been made to exploit more excipients and therapeutic agents, new self-assembly methods and therapeutic mechanisms to expand the scope of carrier-free nanomedicines with enhanced therapeutic performance. In this review, we summarized the research progress of carrier-free nanomedicines with practical applications in cancer therapy. Carrier-free nanomedicines were classified into three kinds, including free drugs, prodrugs and non-drug agents based carrier-free nanomedicines. These carrier-free nanomedicines were introduced in detail according to their drug compositions, assembly and antitumor applications. The current clinical translation situation and safety of carrier-free nanomedicines were also summarized. The outlooks were included in the conclusion section to discuss the existing challenges on the future development and clinical application of carrier-free nanomedicines.

过去十年见证了纳米药物发展的巨大进步。作为一种极具吸引力的纳米药物，无载体纳米药物因其高生物安全性、高载药量、简单的药物成分和简化的合成程序而受到广泛的研究。已经做出了广泛的努力来开发更多的赋形剂和治疗剂、新的自组装方法和治疗机制，以扩大具有增强治疗性能的无载体纳米药物的范围。在这篇综述中，我们总结了无载体纳米药物在癌症治疗中的实际应用研究进展。无载体纳米药物分为三种，包括游离药物、前药和非药物制剂的无载体纳米药物。这些无载体纳米药物根据其药物组成、组装和抗肿瘤应用进行了详细介绍。并总结了目前无载体纳米药物的临床转化情况和安全性。这些展望包含在结论部分，以讨论无载体纳米药物未来发展和临床应用面临的现有挑战。