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Review
. 2021 Aug 23;13(16):4229.
doi: 10.3390/cancers13164229.

Recent Advances in the Treatment of Bone Metastases and Primary Bone Tumors: An Up-to-Date Review

Adrian Emilian Bădilă  1   2 , Dragoș Mihai Rădulescu  1   2 , Adelina-Gabriela Niculescu  3 , Alexandru Mihai Grumezescu  3   4   5 , Marius Rădulescu  6 , Adrian Radu Rădulescu  1   2
Affiliations
Review

Recent Advances in the Treatment of Bone Metastases and Primary Bone Tumors: An Up-to-Date Review

Adrian Emilian Bădilă et al. Cancers (Basel). .

Abstract

In the last decades, the treatment of primary and secondary bone tumors has faced a slow-down in its development, being mainly based on chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and surgical interventions. However, these conventional therapeutic strategies present a series of disadvantages (e.g., multidrug resistance, tumor recurrence, severe side effects, formation of large bone defects), which limit their application and efficacy. In recent years, these procedures were combined with several adjuvant therapies, with different degrees of success. To overcome the drawbacks of current therapies and improve treatment outcomes, other strategies started being investigated, like carrier-mediated drug delivery, bone substitutes for repairing bone defects, and multifunctional scaffolds with bone tissue regeneration and antitumor properties. Thus, this paper aims to present the types of bone tumors and their current treatment approaches, further focusing on the recent advances in new therapeutic alternatives.

Keywords: bone cancers; bone substitutes; bone tumors; drug delivery; targeted therapies; tissue-engineered scaffolds.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Anatomical distribution of common bone sarcoma. Reprinted from an open-access source [8].
Figure 2
Figure 2
Bone sarcoma stem cells overview. (a) osteosarcoma; (b) Ewing sarcoma; (c) chondrosarcoma. (d) A broad spectrum of CSC markers (black) and the molecular mechanisms underlying CSC phenotypes (blue) have been documented for each sarcoma. Several anti-CSC compounds (red) have been preclinically tried to inhibit CSC phenotypes. Reprinted from an open-access source [20].
Figure 3
Figure 3
Graphical representation of the “vicious cycle” caused by cancer bone metastasis. Reprinted from an open-access source [36].
Figure 4
Figure 4
Comparison of bone tumor microenvironment in metastasis versus sarcoma. Created based on information from literature references [36,42,43,44,45].
Figure 5
Figure 5
Various nanocarriers for anticancer drugs. Reprinted from an open-access source [94].
Figure 6
Figure 6
Graphical representation of functionalized scaffolds. (a) Physically immobilized bioactive molecules; (b) Covalently bound bioactive molecules; (c) Scaffold coated with ECM molecules. Reprinted from an open-access source [16].
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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