Cancer Therapeutics and Delivery Strategies of Bioactive Peptides

New therapies are constantly evolving in man?s fight aimed towards successful prevention and treatment of cancer. This paper discusses the role of peptides in cancer therapy. Peptides hold great potential in cancer therapy and diagnostics. This is due to the unique advantages of peptides, such as low molecular weight, ability to specifically target tumor cells and low toxicity in normal tissues. The potential of peptides in cancer treatment is evident from a variety of different strategies that are available to address the progression of tumor growth and propagation of the disease. Peptide-based chemotherapy can be mainly divided into three types, peptide-alone therapy, peptide vaccines, and peptide-conjugated nanomaterials. Peptide-alone therapy may specifically enhance the immune system?s response to kill tumor cells. Peptide-based vaccines have been used in advanced cancers to improve patient?s overall survival. In this review, we mainly focus on the new advances of peptides in cancer therapy, including diagnosis, treatment, prognosis development of anticancer peptides, use of peptides for drug delivery and cancer targeting.