Emerging nanotherapeutics for HPV-associated cancers: current advances, challenges, and future directions

Human Papillomavirus or HPV are viruses belonging to the family Papillomaviridae, these have double-stranded circular DNA. HPV is among the most common sexually transmitted infections which affect over 50% of the adult population. It is also responsible for approximately 5% of total cancer cases. The cancers associated with HPV include cervical cancer, vulvar cancer, vaginal cancer in females, and penile cancer in males. Apart from genital cancer, it also causes other cancers, such as anal cancer, oral cancer and oropharyngeal cancer. Traditional therapeutic methods like surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and others come with many drawbacks, such as non-specificity towards tumorous cells and other harmful effects on other non-tumorous cells. Advancement in nanotherapeutics has enabled us to precisely target cancer cell for better therapeutic outcome. These nanoparticles help in precise drug delivery, and they can also be combined with other treatments like gene therapy or immunotherapy for better results. This review synthesizes findings from PubMed and Scopus databases using keywords such as “nanoparticles” “HPV” and “cancer” to provides a comprehensive overview of HPV-related cancer, their current treatment approaches and their limitations, and advanced nanotherapeutic approaches for HPV-related cancers such as targeted drug delivery using nanoparticles, nanoparticle-mediated radiotherapy, immunotherapy, and gene therapy. Our review findings suggest that advanced nanotherapeutics have the potential to significantly enhance therapeutic outcomes in HPV-related cancers.