Abstract
Nanoparticle-mediated light-activated therapies, such as photodynamic therapy and photothermal therapy, are earnestly being viewed as efficient interventional strategies against several cancer types. Theranostics is a key hallmark of cancer nanomedicine since it allows diagnosis and therapy of both primary and metastatic cancer using a single nanoprobe. Advanced in vivo diagnostic imaging using theranostic nanoparticles not only provides precise information about the location of tumor/s but also outlines the narrow time window corresponding to the maximum tumor-specific drug accumulation. Such information plays a critical role in guiding light-activated therapies with high spatio-temporal accuracy. Furthermore, theranostics facilitates monitoring the progression of therapy in real time. Herein, we provide a general review of the application of theranostic nanoparticles for in vivo image-guided light-activated therapy in cancer. The imaging modalities considered here include fluorescence imaging, photoacoustic imaging, thermal imaging, magnetic resonance imaging, X-ray computed tomography, positron emission tomography, and single-photon emission computed tomography. The review concludes with a brief discussion about the broad scope of theranostic light-activated nanomedicine.
Highlights
Over the past several years, the concept of theranostic nanoparticles, i.e., a single nanoprobe containing at least one diagnostic and one therapeutic functionality, has gained widespread attention [1,2]
This review focuses on the use of such multifunctional theranostic nanoformulations in image-guided light-activated therapies and real-time therapy monitoring
Zhang et al have shown the use of acid-triggered aggregation of peptide-conjugated gold nanoparticles for multimodal (CT, photoacoustic, and photothermal) image-guided photothermal therapy (PTT)
Summary
Over the past several years, the concept of theranostic nanoparticles, i.e., a single nanoprobe containing at least one diagnostic and one therapeutic functionality, has gained widespread attention [1,2] Such nanoparticles offer two attractive biomedical benefits, namely, image-guided therapy and real-time therapy monitoring [3,4]. Multifunctional nanoparticles offer the attractive possibility of targeted, image-guided therapy using a single nanoprobe with both diagnostic and therapeutic functions [5,6,7,8]. These functions can be inherent to the nanoparticle, owing to their novel physical properties at the nanoscale, or can be incorporated via physical/chemical means [9]. We have focused only on the in vivo phototheranostic applications of these nanoformulations
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