癌症对人类生命构成了巨大威胁，而目前的癌症治疗方法，如放射疗法、化学治疗和手术，具有明显的副作用和限制，阻碍了它们的应用。核酸纳米材料具有特定的空间配置，可以作为纳米载体用于传递不同的治疗药物，从而实现各种生物医学应用，如生物传感器和癌症治疗。近几十年来，已合成了各种DNA纳米结构，并展示出在癌症治疗相关应用方面的显著潜力，比如DNA折纸结构、四面体框架核酸和动态DNA纳米结构。值得注意的是，越来越多的关注也被放在RNA纳米结构上，它们在基因治疗中起着重要作用。因此，这篇综述介绍了核酸纳米技术的发展历程，总结了DNA和RNA纳米结构在肿瘤治疗中的应用，并讨论了核酸纳米材料未来的发展机遇。本文版权归《皇家化学学会》所有。

Cancer poses a great threat to human life, and current cancer treatments, such as radiotherapy, chemotherapy, and surgery, have significant side effects and limitations that hinder their application. Nucleic acid nanomaterials have specific spatial configurations and can be used as nanocarriers to deliver different therapeutic drugs, thereby enabling various biomedical applications, such as biosensors and cancer therapy. In recent decades, a variety of DNA nanostructures have been synthesized, and they have demonstrated remarkable potential in cancer therapy related applications, such as DNA origami structures, tetrahedral framework nucleic acids, and dynamic DNA nanostructures. Importantly, more attention is also being paid to RNA nanostructures, which play an important role in gene therapy. Therefore, this review introduces the developmental history of nucleic acid nanotechnology, summarizes the applications of DNA and RNA nanostructures for tumor treatment, and discusses the development opportunities for nucleic acid nanomaterials in the future.This journal is © The Royal Society of Chemistry.