Engineering nanomedicines for improved melanoma therapy: progress and promises

Once metastatic, melanoma remains one of the most aggressive and morbid malignancies. Moreover, in past decades, the overall survival for advanced unresectable melanoma exhibited a constancy of poor prognosis. Low response rates and serious adverse effects have been characteristic of standard therapy based on a combination of chemotherapeutic agents or immunotherapy with IL-2. For example, the chemotherapy including dacarbazine, carmustin, cisplatin and tamoxifen is known as 'Dartmouth regimen' while the CVD regimen comprises carmustine, vinblastine and dacarbazine. Thus, there is an urgent and critical need to reformulate these bioactive agents using nanoscience and nanotechnology as alternative strategies. This article overviews current design and evaluation of nanomedicine undertaken to address this unmet medical need. The nanomedicines studied include polymeric nanoparticles, liposomes, polymersomes, dendrimers, cubosomes, niosomes and nanodiamonds. In this preclinical article, nanotechnology provides hope for effective treatment of this aggressive and largely treatment-resistant disease.