Nanofibers in Glioma Therapy: Advances, Applications, and Overcoming Challenges

Abstract

Despite relentless effort to study glioma treatment, the prognosis for glioma patients remains poor. The main obstacles include the high rate of recurrence and the difficulty of passing the blood-brain barrier (BBB) for therapeutic drugs. Nanomaterials owing to their special physicochemical properties have been used in a wide range of fields thus far. The nanodrug delivery system (NDDS) with the ability of crossing the BBB, targeting glioma site, maintaining drug stability and controlling drug release, has significantly enhanced the anti-tumor therapeutic effect, improving the prognosis of glioma patients. Aligned nanofibers (NFs) are ideal materials to establish in vitro models of glioma microenvironment (GME), enabling the exploration of the mechanism of glioma cell migration and invasion to discover novel therapeutic targets. Moreover, NFs are now widely used in glioma applications such as radiotherapy, phototherapy, thermotherapy and immunotherapy. Despite the absolute dominance of NFs in anti-glioma applications, there are still some problems such as the further optimization of NDDS, and the impact of interactions between nanofibers and the protein corona (PC) on glioma therapy. This paper will shed light on the latest glioma applications of NFs in drug delivery systems and mimicking the tumor microenvironment (TME), and discuss how to further optimize the NDDS and eliminate or utilize the nanomedicine-PC interactions.

Keywords: drug delivery systems; glioma; nanofibers; nanomedicine; tumor microenvironment.

Graphical abstract

Figure 1

The synthesis and application of nanofibers in gliomas. Nanofibers are typically synthesized through electrospinning, self-assembly, and three-dimensional printing for drug delivery and microenvironment simulation of gliomas Created in BioRender. Zhou, (S) (2025) https://BioRender.com/r41m582.

Figure 2

Effective application of nanofiber drug delivery system in glioma treatment. Through electrospinning technology, Temozolomide, Oleuropein or rutin were encapsulated within nanofibers, followed by solvent evaporation in a fume hood. These drug-loaded nanofibers were subsequently applied to treat glioma cells, inducing significant apoptosis in the targeted cell population. Created in BioRender. Zhou, (S) (2025) https://BioRender.com/s19j395.

Figure 3

Nanofiber in simulation of glioma microenvironment. The nanofiber scaffold supports the growth and migration of glioma cells as well as cell interactions. By adding different components to the scaffold, the functionality of the nanofiber scaffold can be further optimized Created in BioRender. Zhou, (S) (2025) https://BioRender.com/m14k458.

Figure 4

The way of nanomedicine crossing the blood-brain barrier. After entering the systemic circulation, nanomedicine can cross the blood-brain barrier via surface modification and target the tumor site, and then showing sustained drug release through slow degradation achieving anti glioma effect for a long time Created in BioRender. Zhou, (S) (2025) https://BioRender.com/e66j862.

Figure 5

Reasonable utilization of protein Corona to improve drug efficacy. Protein corona is formed by spontaneous absorption of protein onto nanomedicines when nanomedicines are placed in biological fluid, which demonstrates the disadvantages of blocking the targeted delivery of nanomedicines to the therapeutic site and simultaneously inducing inflammatory response, thereby reducing curative effects; and the advantages of enhancing the cell targeting and the therapeutic agent uptake while reducing the unexpected cytotoxicity of nanomaterials Created in BioRender. Zhou, (S) (2025) https://BioRender.com/z74c725.