Actively targeting solid tumours with thermoresponsive drug delivery systems that respond to mild hyperthermia

A diverse range of drug delivery vehicles have been developed to specifically target chemotherapeutics to solid tumours while avoiding systemic dose-limiting toxicity. Many of these active targeting strategies display limited efficacy because they rely on subtle differences in expression patterns between pathogenic tissue and healthy tissue. In contrast, drug delivery systems that exploit thermoresponsive behaviour allow a clinician to spatially and temporally control the accumulation and/or release of the toxic agents within tumour tissue by simply applying mild hyperthermia (defined as 39–43 °C) to the desired site. Although thermally sensitive materials comprise a significant portion of the literature on novel drug delivery systems, only a few systems have been methodically tuned to respond within this narrowly defined physiological temperature range in an in vivo environment. This review discusses the materials and strategies developed to control the primary tumour through the combined application of hyperthermia and chemotherapy.