Recent advances in polymeric nanosystems for treating cutaneous melanoma and its metastasis

Melanoma shows a high possibility of mortality after it metastasizes because of its aggressive nature. Although there are several options for anti-melanoma therapy, this skin malignancy is resistant to some therapies. Chemotherapy, biochemotherapy, immunotherapy, and adoptive cell therapy have failed to exhibit a significant amelioration in overall survival. Nanomedicine provides an opportunity to improve the efficiency of the anti-melanoma regimen. Nanoparticles for treating melanoma provide the advantages over conventional therapies such as drug solubility increment, drug stability enhancement, epithelium permeability and bioavailability amelioration, half-life prolonging, tumor targeting, and side effect minimization. Polymeric nanocarriers are the most extensively studied platforms for the treatment of a variety of cancers. The polymers’ sophisticated material engineering tailors the controllable physicochemical properties of the nanoparticles for melanoma penetration via passive and active delivery. The present study highlights the recent progress on the development of polymeric nanoparticles for melanoma treatment. We describe the concepts and improvement mechanisms of the nanomedi-cal techniques for melanoma treatment. Passive targeting by modifying the structure and physicochemical characters of polymeric nanocarriers is a strategy for efficient drug delivery to the melanoma and its metastasis. On the other hand, active targeting such as peptide or antibody conjugation is another approach delivering the drugs or genes to the nidus site by the nanocarriers. This review offers an overview of the benefits of polymeric nanosystems for treating melanoma.