REVIEWS Application of Chitosan-Based Nanocarriers in Tumor-Targeted Drug Delivery Mohammad Ali Ghaz-Jahanian · Farzin Abbaspour-Aghdam · Navideh Anarjan · Aydin Berenjian · Hoda Jafarizadeh-Malmiri © Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014 Abstract Cancer is one of the major malignant diseases in the world. Current anti tumor agents are restricted during the chemotherapy due to their poor solubility in aqueous media, multidrug resistance problems, cytotoxicity, and serious side effects to healthy tissues. Development of targeted drug nanocarriers would enhance the undesirable effects of anticancer drugs and also selectively deliver them to cancerous tissues. Variety of nanocarriers such as micelles, polymeric nanoparticles, liposomes nanogels, dendrimers, and carbon nanotubes have been used for tar- geted delivery of anticancer agents. These nanocarriers transfer loaded drugs to desired sites through passive or active efficacy mechanisms. Chitosan and its derivatives, due to their unique properties such as hydrophilicity, bio- compatibility, and biodegradability, have attracted attention to be used in nanocarriers. Grafting cancer-spe- cific ligands onto the Chitosan nanoparticles, which leads to ligand–receptor interactions, has been successfully developed as active targeting. Chitosan-conjugated com- ponents also respond to external or internal physical and chemical stimulus in targeted tumors that is called environment triggers. In this study, mechanisms of targeted tumor deliveries via nanocarriers were explained; specifi- cally, chitosan-based nanocarriers in tumor-targeting drug delivery were also discussed. Keywords Tumor · Nanocarrier · Chitosan · Targeted drug delivery · Efficacy mechanisms Introduction Cancer is essentially a genetic disease characterized by increased cellular proliferation, reduced cell death, or usually a combination of both. Rapid proliferation of cancer cells, reduces cell death, tissue infiltration, estab- lishment of a blood supply to the tumor, metastasis to secondary sites in the body and dysfunction of affected organs [1]. The ultimate goal of cancer therapeutics is to increase the survival time and the quality of life of the patient by reducing the unintended harmful side effects [2]. The common cancer treatments are chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery with chemotherapy being the major treatment modality [3]. Use of chemotherapy has proven beneficial in improving survival rate for cancer to some extent [4]. However, conventional chemotherapeutic agents are limited by their undesirable properties, such as poor solubility, narrow therapeutic window, and non-specific site of action following oral/intravenous administration and cytotoxicity to normal tissues, which may be the cause of treatment failure in cancer [5, 6]. In the last three decades, therefore, nanopreparations have been evaluated to improve the delivery of potential therapeutic molecules to cancer sites and to improve their stability in systemic circulations while minimizing the exposure to normal tissues to reduce unwanted effects [4]. M. A. Ghaz-Jahanian · F. Abbaspour-Aghdam · H. Jafarizadeh-Malmiri (&) Department of Chemical Engineering, Sahand University of Technology, Tabriz, Iran e-mail: h_jafarizadeh@sut.ac.ir; h_jafarizadeh@yahoo.com N. Anarjan Department of Engineering, College of Chemical Engineering, East Azarbayjan Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tabriz, Iran A. Berenjian (&) Faculty of Science and Engineering, School of Engineering, The University of Waikato, Hamilton 3240, New Zealand e-mail: aydin.berenjian@waikato.ac.nz 123 Mol Biotechnol DOI 10.1007/s12033-014-9816-3