The detection and treatment of cancer could be completely transformed by the application of nanotechnology. New nanoscale targeting methods have emerged as a result of advancements in materials science and protein engineering, giving cancer patients new hope. Only a small number of nanocarriers have been approved for clinical usage in targeting cancer cells, despite the fact that many have been licensed for human studies. We examine a few of the approved formulations in this study and talk about the difficulties in transferring laboratory results to clinical settings. This review emphasises the inherent challenges in cancer therapy as well as the different nanocarriers and chemicals that can be used for specific tumour targeting. Future advancements in cancer detection and therapy could be facilitated by nanotechnology, but still the area remains vast and more clinical as well as laboratory trails are the need of the hour to overcome the present barriers and align the discovery of the potential application of nanobots from a mere lab work to a full-fledged clinical and translational work.