Multivesicular liposomes as a potential drug delivery platform for cancer therapy: A systematic review

Abstract Cancer is among the most challenging diseases in the world and the number of people who are diagnosed with various cancers is growing every year. Chemotherapy with cytotoxic drugs is one of the main strategies for cancer treatment, however cell cycle-specific drugs, as a wide group of cytotoxic drugs, suffer from having a short plasma half-life. Besides, patients often complain about multiple administration of those drugs to maintain the therapeutic plasma concentration. Multivesicular liposomes (MVLs) have special traits to overcome these obstacles in cancer therapy which include but are not limited to the ability to prolong the drug release, reduce the number of injections and lower the toxicity due to their special structure, size, and high encapsulation efficiency. In this study, we have conducted a systematic review of published articles about the role and benefits of encapsulating anticancer agents in MVLs to ameliorate the outcome of the cancer treatment. As the results show, MVLs are capable of prolonging the in vivo retention time of anticancer drugs up to 262.5 folds, increasing the antitumor efficacy significantly and lowering systemic side effects when compared to the free drug. Thus, considering their appropriate properties, MVLs can be used as an appropriate depot system in the treatment of various cancers.