尽管制药行业在药物发现和开发方面取得了重大进展，但癌症仍然是科学界面临的最艰巨的挑战之一。纳米技术的影响无疑已经解决了与传统抗癌方式相关的主要问题。然而，单核吞噬细胞系统（MPS）对纳米粒子（NP）的不良识别、其在生物体液中的稳定性差、有效负载的过早释放以及生物相容性低限制了其临床转化。近几十年来，基于壳聚糖（CS）的纳米递送系统（例如，聚合物纳米粒子、胶束、脂质体、树枝状聚合物、缀合物、固体脂质纳米粒子等）在改善化疗药物的药代动力学和药效学方面获得了研究人员的认可。然而，这篇综述的特点是主要关注并批判性地讨论各种基于CS的纳米颗粒治疗不同类型癌症的靶向潜力。根据其传递机制，我们将基于 CS 的 NP 分为刺激响应型、被动型或主动靶向纳米系统。此外，适应CS-NP结构的各种功能化策略（例如聚乙二醇（PEG）接枝、疏水性取代、刺激响应接头的束缚以及靶向配体的缀合）也已被用于靶向化疗药物的靶向递送。经过考虑的。尽管如此，基于 CS-NP 的治疗方法在改善治疗结果、同时减轻化疗的脱靶效应方面有着巨大的希望，长期的安全性和人体临床测试是其成功临床转化的保证。© 2024 Al-Shadidi 等。

Despite all major advancements in drug discovery and development in the pharmaceutical industry, cancer is still one of the most arduous challenges for the scientific community. The implications of nanotechnology have certainly resolved major issues related to conventional anticancer modalities; however, the undesired recognition of nanoparticles (NPs) by the mononuclear phagocyte system (MPS), their poor stability in biological fluids, premature release of payload, and low biocompatibility have restricted their clinical translation. In recent decades, chitosan (CS)-based nanodelivery systems (eg, polymeric NPs, micelles, liposomes, dendrimers, conjugates, solid lipid nanoparticles, etc.) have attained promising recognition from researchers for improving the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of chemotherapeutics. However, the specialty of this review is to mainly focus on and critically discuss the targeting potential of various CS-based NPs for treatment of different types of cancer. Based on their delivery mechanisms, we classified CS-based NPs into stimuli-responsive, passive, or active targeting nanosystems. Moreover, various functionalization strategies (eg, grafting with polyethylene glycol (PEG), hydrophobic substitution, tethering of stimuli-responsive linkers, and conjugation of targeting ligands) adapted to the architecture of CS-NPs for target-specific delivery of chemotherapeutics have also been considered. Nevertheless, CS-NPs based therapeutics hold great promise for improving therapeutic outcomes while mitigating the off-target effects of chemotherapeutics, a long-term safety profile and clinical testing in humans are warranted for their successful clinical translation.© 2024 Al-Shadidi et al.