ABSTRACT
During growth and progression, the microenvironment of tumors suffers a series of abnormal characteristics, which include hypoxia, acid pH, increased oxidative stress, excess glutathione (GSH), as well as certain overexpressed enzymes. Although affect or limit the cancer therapeutic outcomes, these factors provide possible approaches to strategies for cancer detection and novel therapy at the same time. Recently, based on these properties of the tumor microenvironment (TME), various kinds of responsive nano-platforms have been continuously developed and applied in cancer theranostics preliminarily. Thus, this review would introduce the typical features of TME firstly, then detailly summarize the design principles and research progress of corresponding hypoxia-responsive, pH-responsive, redox-responsive, enzyme-responsive, dual-responsive and multi-responsive nano-platforms. Finally, the challenges and the perspectives of the TME-responsive nano-platforms are briefly discussed.