Multimodal Nano-Systems for Cancer Diagnosis, Imaging, and Therapy

Abstract

The American Cancer Society projects 1,660,290 new cases and 580,350 deaths from cancer in the United States in 2013, accounting for one in every four human illness-related deaths. Poor therapeutic outcome of cancer can be largely related to lack of technologies to diagnose the disease in its early stage of development, where the tumor is still confined to its primary site of origin and has not disseminated to other organs in the body. Advanced stage of disease is often associated with multiple metastatic sites of tumor, development of inherent or acquired multidrug resistance, and complex anatomical and functional barriers resulting in insignificant prognosis of the disease. Significant advances have been made in understanding the disease at the cellular, molecular, and physiological level, but there is an urgent need for technologies to diagnose and treat cancer simultaneously. This book chapter focuses on progresses in the nanotechnology-based strategies for diagnosis, imaging, and therapy of cancer with illustrative examples from the recent literature. Such theranostic systems are designed to evade recognition from host's immune system, exploit the tumor microenvironment to accumulate at the desired site of action, and target specific cancer cells for payload delivery. Advances in cancer biology, instrument design, novel synthesis approaches, surface functionalization methods, and characterization techniques have paved way for successful designing, integration, and customization of multi-modal nanoparticle delivery vector that hold tremendous potential in prevention and cure of cancer.