Chapter 4 - Pharmaceutical perspectives of selection criteria and toxicity profiling of nanotheranostic agents

Abstract

Nanotheranostic agents are nanoparticles for the site-specific delivery of drugs and diagnostic agents. The versatility is that it enables less invasive, local, and concurrent diagnosis cum treatment. It paves the pathway for personalized medicine. Personalized medicine is the next trendsetter in modern medicine. Although considerable progress has been made in proving the efficacy of these systems at preclinical level, safety concerns remain. The widely explored nanoconstructs for nanotheranostics are systems based on polymer conjugates, metallic nanoparticles, solid lipid nanoparticles (SLN), dendrimers, and carbon nanotubes (CNTs). In this work, pharmaceutical perspectives for improving theranostic design from safety perspectives are discussed. The conceptual questions addressed in this review are: (1) Which properties of the nanoparticles are relevant for nanotheranostic design from the safety perspective? (2) How the intrinsic and extrinsic factors affect the properties of the nanoparticles in the long run? (3) What is important from safety perspective for developing need-based selection criteria for the design and development of the nanotheranostics? (4) What are the importance of developing new toxicological screening methods specific to nanomaterials along with the current market and clinical perspectives. The review and discussions lead to the requirement of specialization in this area for clinical translation.