Abstract
The requirements for early diagnostics as well as effective treatment of insidious diseases such as cancer constantly increase the pressure on development of efficient and reliable methods for targeted drug/gene delivery as well as imaging of the treatment success/failure. One of the most recent approaches covering both the drug delivery as well as the imaging aspects is benefitting from the unique properties of nanomaterials. Therefore a new field called nanomedicine is attracting continuously growing attention. Nanoparticles, including fluorescent semiconductor nanocrystals (quantum dots) and magnetic nanoparticles, have proven their excellent properties for in vivo imaging techniques in a number of modalities such as magnetic resonance and fluorescence imaging, respectively. In this article, we review the main properties and applications of nanoparticles in various in vitro imaging techniques, including microscopy and/or laser breakdown spectroscopy and in vivo methods such as magnetic resonance imaging and/or fluorescence-based imaging. Moreover the advantages of the drug delivery performed by nanocarriers such as iron oxides, gold, biodegradable polymers, dendrimers, lipid based carriers such as liposomes or micelles are also highlighted.
Highlights
Imaging techniques play an important role in the medical care of all organ systems and better and increased research in medical imaging may be beneficial for the complete health and disease management process
Jain et al investigated Magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) consisting of an iron-oxide magnetic core coated with oleic acid and stabilized with a Pluronic® or Tetronic® block copolymer as an effective cancer theranostic agent, i.e., an agent with combined drug delivery and imaging properties [22]
With the recent emergence of methods appropriate for bio-marker in vivo staining, such as bioluminescence, fluorescent molecular probes and proteins, as well as nanoparticle-based targeted agents, significant attention has been shifted toward in vivo interrogations of different dynamic biological processes at the molecular level. This progress has been largely supported by the development of advanced tomographic imaging technologies suitable for obtaining volumetric visualization of bio-marker distributions in small animals at a whole-body or whole-organ scale, an imaging frontier that is not accessible by the existing tissue-sectioning microscopic techniques due to intensive light scattering beyond the depth of a few hundred microns [29]
Summary
Imaging techniques play an important role in the medical care of all organ systems and better and increased research in medical imaging may be beneficial for the complete health and disease management process. The development of new materials of nanometer dimensions for biomedical applications has been in the focus in the last few years. Their applications became important in medicine, targeted therapies and diagnostics. Modern materials like nanowires [1], quantum dots [2] carbon nanotubes [3], nanoparticles [4,5] or nanomaterials [6] (Figure 2) are in the centre of attention due to the fact that the mechanical, chemical, electrical, optical, magnetic, electro-optical and magneto-optical properties of these particles are different from their bulk properties and depend on the particle size. NPs and other colloidal drug-delivery systems modify the kinetics, body distribution and drug release of an associated drug
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