• Niosomes: Promising nanocarriers as co-delivery systems for cancer therapy
  • Navid Mousazadeh,1 Negin Mousazadeh,2 Hamid Rashidzadeh,3,*
    1. Department of Medical Biotechnology, School of Medicine, Zanjan University of Medical Sciences, Zanjan, Iran
    2. Department of Nursing, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Ardabil University of Medical Sciences, Ardabil, Iran
    3. Cancer Gene Therapy Research Center, Zanjan University of Medical Sciences, Zanjan, Iran


  • Introduction: Over the last decade, development of nanomaterials for a variety of biomedical applications, especially for the diagnosis and treatment of diseases have received great attention (1). Biocompatibility, non-toxicity, high drug loading capacity, controlled release of cargo are accounted for the characteristics of an ideal drug carrier for smart drug delivery systems (2). In the context of drug nanovehicles for cancer therapy, various types of nanosystems such as nanogels, cubosomes dendrimers, carbon nanotube, liposomes nanospheres, nanocapsules, and niosomes have been developed so far (3). Among these carriers, niosomes regards as a propitious drug vehicle and could be fabricated by self-association of nonionic surfactants and cholesterol in an aqueous phase. Interestingly, it possess great stability, biosafety, long shelf-life and biocompatibility as its structures and components are similar to cell bilayer. Besides these they are nonimmunogenic, biodegradable and could deliver its cargo into the intended site of action in a controlled and/or sustained manner (4, 5). Niosomes owing to its unique structure could encapsulate both hydrophilic and lipophilic drugs as new classes of effective drug delivery systems.Cancer as group of disease is still one of the leading causes of death worldwide, leading to a steady increase in the economic and financial burden on healthcare and treatment (6). According to the global cancer statistics, in 2020, aproximately 19.3 million new cases of cancer along with 10 million deaths occurred (7). The current and common method of cancer treatment is chemotherapy. Therapeutic effect of many anticancer drugs due to their weak penetration into tumor tissue and severe side effects are highly limited. Various attempts have been made to overcome these shortcomings, such as implementation of niosomes as a unique drug delivery system (4). The aim of the current work is to review the most recent advances and applications of niosomes in the treatment of cancer with particular emphasis on recent studies in co-delivery of drugs for cancer therapy.
  • Methods: In this review article the key words of niosomes and combination therapy, cancer were searched in various databases such as Google scholar and some exciting novel articles were selected.
  • Results: It was found that niosomes are promising nanocarriers in multi-drug delivery applications. Akbarzadeh and colleagues developed a folic acid-functionalized niosome containing curcumin (CUR) and letrozole as a potential drug nanovehicles for the treatment of breast cancer cells. The in vitro cell viability assay revealed that the fabricated nanovehicles exhibited great biocompatibility with HEK-293 normal cells, whereas, displaced significant cytotoxicity activity toward MDA-MB-231and MCF-7 cell lines due to the modification of niosomal formulation with targeting agent of folic acid (8). In another research Abtahi et al. fabricated niosomal formularion containing microRNA-34a (miR-34a) and CUR for effective cancer therapy. The results showed that fabricated niosamal formulation (NCur-miR) represented superior anticancer potential and cellular uptake in cancer cells and suppressed tumor growth compared to other groups (9). Additionally, Maniam et al. showed that co-encapsulation of tocotrienols and gemcitabine in the niosomal formulation exhibited remarkable cytotoxicity activity on cell pancreatic cancer (10). Rathee and colleagues revealed that co-delivery of TLR7 agonist with IDO-inhibitor by nisomal formulation could be further investigated in cancer vaccine as well (11). Additionally, Ghaffari and colleagues developed cationic niosomes decorated with PEG moieties for co-delivery of miRNAs. In this regard both niosomes containing miR-16–1 and miR-15a was prepared and its potential efficacy in prostate cancer cells were evaluated. The results indicated that the niosomal formulation containing both miRNAs could effectively downregulate the Bcl-2 gene, induce more apoptosis and resulted in favorable outcomes in treatment of prostate cancer (12).
  • Conclusion: Niosomes as new classes of drug vehicles offer several advantages compared with other nanomaterial-based drug carrier in design of smart and effective drug delivery vehicles. As they could potentially deliver either hydrophilic and lipophilic drugs or both of them in which could be harnessed in combination therapy and co-delivery of chemotherapeutics. Several studies proved that niosomes as very promising tools can be utilized for combination therapy in combating cancer.
  • Keywords: niosomes, combination therapy, co-delivery, nanocarrier, cancer therapy