Current development of theragnostic nanoparticles for women’s cancer treatment

Abstract

In the biomedical industry, nanoparticles (NPs - exclusively small particles with size ranging from 1 – 100 nanometres) are recently employed as powerful tools due to their huge potential in sophisticated and enhanced cancer theragnostic (i.e. therapeutics and diagnostics). Cancer is a life-threatening disease caused by carcinogenic agents and mutation in cells, leading to uncontrolled cell growth and harming the body's normal functioning while affecting several factors like low levels of ROS, hyperactive antiapoptotic mRNA expression, reduced proapoptotic mRNA expression, damaged DNA repair, and so on. NPs are extensively used in early cancer diagnosis and are functionalized to target receptors overexpressing cancer cells for effective cancer treatment. This review focuses explicitly on how NPs alone and combined with imaging techniques and advanced treatment techniques have been researched against “women’s cancer” such as breast, ovarian, and cervical cancer which are substantially occurring in women. NPs, in combination with numerous imaging techniques (like PET, SPECT, MRI, etc.) have been widely explored for cancer imaging and understanding tumor characteristics. Moreover, NPs in combination with various advanced cancer therapeutics (like magnetic hyperthermia, pH responsiveness, photothermal therapy, etc.), have been stated to be more targeted and effective therapeutic strategies with negligible side effects. Furthermore, this review will further help to improve treatment outcomes and patient quality of life based on the theragnostic application-based studies of NPs in women’s cancer treatment.