Radiosensitizers in Radiation-Induced Cancer Therapy

Radiation therapy (RT) has established as a very auspicious tool to tackle cancer, but its efficacy has encountered with some challenges. As we all know, in the case of cancer therapy by RT, high doses of radiation is required to fully eradicate tumor cells and shrink them as well. However, this auspicious tool is far from being faultless, as its enhancement in maximally killing tumor cells while minimally causing severe adverse effects to normal cells have always been unresolved clinical problems and challenges. To address these drawbacks, researchers have conducted a lot of research studies, among them, radiosensitizers have shown great potential to improve the bottleneck of RT for cancer therapy. Radiosensitizers are chemical or pharmacologic agents that makes tumor cells more vulnerable to RT by augmenting free radical formation and assisting DNA damage. Over the last decades, many attempts have been devoted to design and fabricate radiosensitizers that are highly efficient in tumor therapy and characterized with low toxicity. In this review, we classified and summarized the emerging strategies as three main types including nanomaterials, macromolecules, and small molecules based on their structure. Additionally, the development states of radiosensitizers, their mechanisms and how to harness their power to improve radiosensitizers sensibility are presented. We also summarize all exciting advances approaches and emerging smart strategies accossiated with fabrication of radiosensitizers as well as prospects and challenges for clinical translation of these agents in oncotherapy are reviewed.