Abstract: Cancer is a dynamic and heterogeneous disease with high mortality and high morbidity. In the treatment of cancer, chemotherapy is consi-dered to be one of the most effective means. While conventional chemotherapy has some defects such as multidrug resistance, highly toxic, rapid elimination of chemotherapy drugs by metabolism, drug inactivation, and it may accumulate at non-specific sites to cause damage to normal cells and tissues. Advances in drug delivery technology and nanotechnology have allowed new formulations of drugs to improve pharmacokinetics, enhance accumulation in solid tumors, and reduce the significant toxic side effects of these important therapeutic agents. Intracellular drug delivery to tumor cells and cell imaging is critical for the clinical treatment of malignant tumors. Therefore, there is a need for effective drug delivery and cell imaging systems. Cancer nanotechnology is an emerging field of cancer diagnosis and treatment. Although significant progress has been made in delivering targeted anti-cancer agents to specific sites of interest, new nanomaterials are often developed and explored to achieve higher drug delivery efficiencies. Efficient targeted delivery of drugs is critical for cancer treatment. With advances in drug delivery technology and nanotechnology, many efficient drug delivery systems have been developed with nanotechnology, providing a versatile platform for simultaneous therapeutic and diagnostic (diagnostic) functions. In recent years, quantum dots have become more and more widely used for cell targeting, imaging, and drug delivery due to their unique optical and physicochemical properties. This review discusses the recent advances in the use of biocompatible graphene quantum dots, carbon quantum dots, and zinc oxide quantum dots as carriers for anticancer drugs. And the cytotoxicity, fluorescence imaging, smart delivery, and synergistic treatment of these quantum dots in the application of multifunctional parts is summarized. At last, we list the challenges of practical application as a therapeutic drug carrier.
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