الفهرس 
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Abstract
Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the third most diagnosed cancer and the second most deadly cancer worldwide. There are several conventional methods for colon cancer treatment that include surgery, radiation therapy, and chemotherapy.
Unfortunately, chemotherapy not only destroys the malignant cells but also damages the normal tissues and patient ultimately suffer from unwanted side effects such as neutropenia, anemia, hand-foot syndrome, diarrhea and nausea. Protein nanoparticles (NPs) show interesting characteristics as small sizes, large surface-to-volume ratios, high drug loading capacity, self-assembly capacity, and biocompatibility.
Consequently, they have the potential to increase both selectivity and potency of chemical, physical, and biological approaches for eliciting cancer cell death while lowering the toxicity to non-malignant cells.
Lactoferrin is a naturally occurring iron-transporting glycoprotein of transferrin family, found in many mammalian excretions such as milk. Lf has a multifunctional capacity, including iron absorption regulatory effect in bowel, immunomodulatory properties and confirmed anticancer properties.
Moreover, it can internalize into cancer cells via its high binding affinity to many receptors that overexpressed on cancer cells surface, such as low-density lipoprotein (LDL) and Lf-receptors. Furthermore, Lf can be internalized into the nucleus, the site of action of most anti-cancer drugs, through its nuclear localization sequence. Polymer-drug conjugate therapeutics are considered a promising drug delivery system, especially in cancer treatment.
The conjugation of cytotoxic drugs to polymeric carriers through covalent bonds offers various advantages such as improving drug solubility, site- specific drug release, and reducing its side effect.
However, oral delivery of protein NPs suffers from certain obstacles, due to the numerous barriers present in the GIT.
When protein NPs pass through the stomach, the particles could be partially degraded due to the low pH, resulting in potential loss of protein NPs activity.
In addition, protein NPs can be digested by pepsin; even if they survived the previous challenges, they must then face early intestinal absorption during their passage through the small intestine hindering their targeted delivery to colon cancer.
Microencapsulation of NPs combines the advantages of both NPs and MPs and leading to features that are unique and different from those of the individual components.
Microencapsulation of NPs has been demonstrated to avoid premature degradation or uptake of NPs during their passage through the upper GIT, thus increasing the delivery of NPs to the colon for enhanced therapeutic efficacy