在全球范围内，癌症是一种困难且具有毁灭性的疾病。当前化疗的几个问题包括细胞毒性、缺乏选择性、干细胞样细胞生长和多药耐药性。最适合癌症治疗的纳米材料是那些具有细胞毒性、有限特异性、药物容量和生物利用度等特性的纳米材料；这些材料是纳米级的（1-100 nm）。尽管研究不断深入，但纳米药物很少被许可用于治疗用途。这些化合物需要纳米载体靶向药物递送实验来改善其翻译。这篇综述描述了文献中报道的新型纳米材料、其临床研究的障碍以及其有益的癌症治疗用途。它还提出了在癌症治疗中更有效地使用纳米材料的方法，并描述了癌症治疗的内在挑战以及可用于特定肿瘤靶向的不同纳米载体和化学品。此外，它还简要概述了癌症治疗诊断方法，重点关注那些使用纳米材料的方法。尽管纳米技术为癌症检测和治疗的未来进步提供了重要来源，但仍然需要更多的研究来解决目前临床转化的障碍。版权所有© Bentham Science Publishers；如有任何疑问，请发送电子邮件至 epub@benthamscience.net。

On a global scale, cancer is a difficult and devastating illness. Several problems with current chemotherapies include cytotoxicity, lack of selectivity, stem-like cell growth, and multi-drug resistance. The most appropriate nanomaterials for cancer treatment are those with characteristics, such as cytotoxicity, restricted specificity, and drug capacity and bioavailability; these materials are nanosized (1-100 nm). Nanodrugs are rarely licenced for therapeutic use despite growing research. These compounds need nanocarrier-targeted drug delivery experiments to improve their translation. This review describes new nanomaterials reported in the literature, impediments to their clinical studies, and their beneficial cancer therapeutic use. It also suggests ways to use nanomaterials in cancer therapy more efficiently and describes the intrinsic challenges of cancer treatment and the different nanocarriers and chemicals that can be utilised for specified tumour targeting. Furthermore, it provides a concise overview of cancer theranostics methods, with a focus on those that make use of nanomaterials. Although nanotechnology offers a great source for future advancements in cancer detection and therapy, there is an emerging need for more studies to address the present barriers to clinical translation.Copyright© Bentham Science Publishers; For any queries, please email at epub@benthamscience.net.