9 - Polymeric nanoparticles as tumor-targeting theranostic platform

Abstract

Nanomedicines have gathered great importance in the modern treatment of cancer with their unique advantages of target-specific drug delivery; possible active targeting, passive targeting, and internal/external stimuli mediated targeting; reducing adverse effects by reduction of dose and prevention of nonspecific accumulation; improved bioavailability with tissue-specific accumulation; as well as longer blood circulation thereby enhanced biodistribution profiling. Most chemotherapeutics used in the current diagnosis and treatment of cancer are invasive, with severe adverse effects, and need a significantly longer duration of treatment. On the other hand, nanotheranostics can provide a multimodal platform for simultaneous imaging, diagnosis, and therapy with their flexible modifications according to the needs to reach the target site; significant accumulation to produce adequate signal-to-background ratio, and also to deliver an adequate therapeutic agent to the target tissues; controlled and triggered release of therapeutic moieties to the target sites; and generation of specific effects to the target region (e.g., hyperthermia for magnetic nanotherapy). In this chapter, we have reviewed different strategies developed for the application of polymeric nanoparticles for cancer diagnosis and therapy, with a closer look at the recent studies, and how the strategic development has progressed throughout the years for the bench-to-market conversion of concept to commercialization.