Nanocarrier-Mediated Gene Editing for Improved Tumour Therapeutic Efficacy

Abstract

Conventional gene editing delivery systems are plagued by poor long-term blood circulation stability, weak active tumour-targeting capability, and severe off-target immunogenicity after systemic intravenous administration, greatly restricting the widespread clinical application of precise minimally invasive malignant tumour therapy. This paper reviews considerable recent preclinical literature to systematically summarize the classification, physicochemical properties, and diverse fabrication techniques of mainstream lipid, polymeric, and inorganic nanocarriers. It further elaborates the core working mechanisms of CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing and several types of nanomaterial-assisted delivery platforms, and comprehensively compares their in vivo antitumour performance along with distinct respective merits and unavoidable inherent biological drawbacks. While nanocarriers substantially enhance the systemic in vivo transport and intracellular endosomal escape delivery efficiency of CRISPR gene-editing components, multiple critical translational bottlenecks still persist, including low cargo loading efficiency and inadequate intratumoural enrichment after intravenous injection. This review sorts out such core technical bottlenecks and highlights prospective research directions, such as multifunctional unified carriers and tumour microenvironment-responsive targeted delivery designs, which provides reliable systematic theoretical support for the subsequent clinical translation of nanomaterial-mediated gene editing against various malignancies.