Advanced Polymeric Nanomedicine Approaches for Tumour and Tumour Microenvironment Modulation

Polymeric nanomedicines have emerged as a versatile and highly tunable platform for targeted cancer therapy, offering significant advantages in overcoming key limitations of conventional treatments, including poor bioavailability, rapid systemic clearance, off-target toxicity, and multidrug resistance. Owing to the structural diversity of natural and synthetic polymers, these systems enable precise control over size, architecture, surface functionality, and drug release behavior.

While nanotechnology-based drug delivery has been widely explored, polymeric nanomedicine provides unique opportunities to actively modulate the tumor microenvironment (TME) - a critical yet underexploited determinant of therapeutic response. Features such as hypoxia, acidic pH, immune suppression, and stromal barriers can be strategically targeted using stimuli-responsive and ligand-engineered polymeric systems.

This Research Topic aims to highlight advanced polymer-based nanomedicine strategies with a central focus on tumor and TME modulation, distinguishing itself from broader nanocarrier or phytomedicine-focused collections. Emphasis will be placed on:

- Structure–function relationships in polymeric nanocarriers (biopolymers and synthetic systems)
- Stimuli-responsive and smart polymeric platforms for site-specific drug release
- Ligand-functionalized nanoparticles for dual or multi-targeting of tumor cells and TME components
- Mechanistic insights into cellular uptake, intracellular trafficking, and microenvironment interactions
- Strategies to overcome tumor heterogeneity and multidrug resistance
- Polymeric nanomedicine in immune modulation and stromal reprogramming
- Theranostic systems integrating imaging and therapeutic functionalities
- Translational challenges, including scalability, reproducibility, and clinical relevance

Please note: manuscripts consisting solely of bioinformatics, computational analysis, or predictions of public databases which are not accompanied by validation (independent clinical or patient cohort, or biological validation in vitro or in vivo, which are not based on public databases) are not suitable for publication in this Research Topic.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Clinical Trial
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• ... View all formats

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Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Clinical Trial
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Review
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: polymer-based nanomedicine, cancer, ligand, targeting, Dual targeting, tumor microenvironment, bioactives

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.