TABLE 1.
Receptors: principal categories, functions, and applications.
| Major categories of receptors | Functions and applications |
|---|---|
| VEGFR | Functions: increase vascular permeability; make lung cancer drug-resistant Tran et al. (2002), Herbst et al. (2005) |
| • tLYP-1(NRP-1)enhanced the tumor inhibitory effect and reduced the side effects Jin et al. (2018) | |
| • Flk-1(VEGFR-2)enhanced the tumor inhibitory effect and reduced the side effects on heart and kidney Liu et al. (2011) | |
| αvβ3 Integrin | Functions: promoting tumor angiogenesis and tumor metastasis Marelli et al. (2013) |
| • GRGDSP(αvβ3 and α5β1)inhibited tumor growth and reduced side effectsBabu et al. (2017) | |
| • RGD (Integrin) improved the anti-tumor activity and delayed the release of loaded drugs Wang et al. (2018) | |
| • cRGD (Integrin) -PS-DOX was more likely to accumulate in tumors Zou et al. (2018) | |
| EGFR | Functions: involve in tumor growth and progression, including proliferation, angiogenesis, invasion and metastasis Singh et al. (2016) |
| • ER (EGFR) enhanced the targeting effect on PC-9 (Zhang et al., 2019) | |
| • EGF (EGFR) increased the distribution of NPs in tumor tissues, enhanced the uptake of NPs by lung cancer cells, and greatly enhanced the tumor-killing effect of drugs Zhang et al. (2016) | |
| • APT improved tumor inhibition, induced apoptosis, and had more minor side effects Lv et al. (2018) | |
| σ Receptor | Functions: overexpressed in rapidly proliferating normal cells and cancer cells such as malignant melanoma, glioma, breast cancer, prostate cancer, SCLC and NSCLC van Waarde et al. (2015) |
| • AA improved the delivery efficiency of siRNA by 9 times Yang et al. (2012) | |
| • AA can target the overexpressed σ receptor Xiong et al. (2016) | |
| Folate Receptor | Functions: tumor tissue specificity; tumor marker |
| • Improved the effectiveness and specificity of photodynamic therapy (PDT) Kato et al. (2017) | |
| • Den NPs:suitable carrier for co-delivery of siRNA and chemotherapeutic drugs in lung cancer cells Amreddy et al. (2018) | |
| • Efficacy of folate receptor-α (FRA)-targeted DOTAP Muralidharan et al. (2016) | |
| • FA modified amphiphilic PEG-PLGA copolymer NPs carried with CDDP and PTX He et al. (2015); also effective for the combined delivery of cisplatin and paclitaxel He et al. (2016) | |
| Transferrin Receptor | Functions: expression level is higher in cells with a high proliferation rate, especially in tumor cells Daniels et al. (2006), Cheng et al. (2011), Dev and Babitt, (2017) |
| • As a monitoring index of gambogic acid therapy sensitivity Zhu et al. (2009) | |
| • Combination of TFR and artemisinin could reduce small cell lung cancer drug resistance Sadava et al. (2002) | |
| • Thymoquinone-NP modified transferrin successfully couples two different miRNA pathways Upadhyay et al. (2019) | |
| CD44 | Functions: plays an important role in malignant tumor-related activities |
| • HA-PCL- CAP nanoparticles identified the potential for the treatment of non-small cell lung cancer Parashar et al. (2019) |