Involvement of planned cell death of necroptosis in cancer treatment by nanomaterials: Recent advances and future perspectives.

With the expansion of the field of nanomedicine, the use of nanomaterials in cancer treatment has raised questions about their safety and unpredictable adverse effects. To date, the hazardous effects of nanomaterials have been investigated based on cell survival and cellular functionality, such as membrane integrity, mitochondrial activity and cell morphology. It is increasingly noted that more detailed analysis of regulated cell death pathways (RCD) triggered by nanomaterials is essential to understand their full mechanism of action. One the one hand, this knowledge helps to design safe therapeutics and on the other hand may increase the therapeutic potential of NP-based anti-cancer drugs. The most common pathways for RCD in cancers include apoptosis; necroptosis and autophagy-dependent cell death with the latter two often act as secondary death pathways in cancer cells when the apoptotic pathway is non-functional. This article reviews the recent developments in the ability of nanomaterials and NPs to induce the above forms of RCD and future perspectives on the utility of nanomaterials on triggering RCD.