Recent advances in peptide-based self-assembled and metal coordinated nanocarriers for targeted cancer drug delivery

Despite significant progress in anti-cancer therapies, major challenges persist, such as cytotoxicity, drug resistance, and lack of specificity toward tumour tissues. In recent years, peptide self-assembly has emerged as a powerful strategy in biomedical and cancer research for creating functional nanomaterials with enhanced therapeutic potential. A wide range of self-assembled peptide-based drug delivery systems has been developed for cancer treatment, offering improved efficacy and selectivity of pharmaceutical agents while minimizing toxicity to healthy tissues. Self-assembled peptide nanostructures exhibit excellent versatility, capable of encapsulating both hydrophobic and hydrophilic drugs, and can be engineered to release therapeutic agents at disease sites by incorporating stimuli-responsive elements. This review highlights recent advancements in the design and application of self-assembled peptide nanomaterials, based on both linear and cyclic peptides, as well as the role of metal coordination in enhancing drug delivery performance. We describe the synthesis and functionality of metal-coordinated peptide assemblies, which not only enhance stability and responsiveness but also address existing limitations in self-assembly peptide-based drug delivery, particularly in the context of triggered or site-specific release of anticancer therapeutics. Through this review, we aim to provide a comprehensive outline of recent strategies and innovations in peptide self-assembly for targeted cancer therapy, with a particular emphasis on overcoming current therapeutic challenges.