Recent advances in Zn-MOFs and their derivatives for cancer therapeutic applications

Researchers have developed dozens of cancer treatment strategies to address the high proportion of cancer deaths in total deaths. However, the treatment of cancer inevitably has various drawbacks and sequelae. Drug delivery systems (DDSs) provide hope for addressing issues such as early release in cancer treatment, as they have active ingredients with controllable doses and delivery kinetics (AI). Metal organic frameworks (MOFs) offer various possibilities for constructing drug delivery systems: organic ligands serve as carriers, metal ions serve as attachment sites, and self-assemble through ligand binding to adaptive structures, exhibiting excellent biocompatibility, biodegradability, high cancer cell toxicity, and low normal cell toxicity. Zinc-based MOFs are some of the MOFs. It is very important to choose zinc-based MOFs that have good inhibitory and diagnostic effects on cancer as drug delivery carriers. Although numerous studies and reviews have explored the application of zinc-based MOFs in drug delivery, they typically only cover one aspect. In contrast, we hope to focus on the application of zinc-based MOFs in various cancer treatments, including: (1) chemotherapy, (2) photodynamic therapy, (3) photothermal therapy, (4) chemical kinetics therapy, (5) sonodynamic therapy, (6) immunotherapy, (7) gene therapy, (8) hunger therapy, and (9) two or more combination therapies. This paper summarizes the application of zinc-based MOFs in cancer treatment and discusses their advantages, disadvantages and application prospects. At the same time, a review was conducted on the synthesis of typical Zn-MOFs, with the expectation of better in-depth research on Zn-MOFs.