Nanoengineered photoactive theranostic agents for cancer

Abstract

Cancer has gained much attention because of slow development of advanced diagnostics and therapeutic strategies. So far, conventional procedures like surgery, radiation therapy and chemotherapy are only available options for cancer treatment which have various limitations. To overcome the limitations of conventional procedures, nanodiagnostics, and therapeutics are emerging approaches for localized diagnosis and treatment of cancer nowadays. So far, various bio-mimicking and stimuli active cancer theranostic platforms have been established but they are limited only for animal studies and their clinical translational progress is slow. Among various cancer theranostics platforms, photoresponsive systems have shown promising outcomes for cancer theranostics applications due to their specific physicochemical properties, biocompatibility, multifunctionality etc. Moreover, these photothermal agents in combination with diagnostics probes and surface functional targeting moieties demonstrate their synergistic response for site selective imaging and ablating cancer cells/tumor. Photoactive principles are rife and with increasing access to light irradiation setups, more the discovery of photoactive products, more would be the success reaped in cancer battle. This review highlights recent developments in cancer nanotheranostics with a special focus on photoactive functional nanotheranostics. Moreover, the challenges involved in clinical translation of photoactive materials along with their application in vivid areas of cancer nanomedicine and elucidate the future implications on photoactive therapy have been addressed here.

The Release of a Highly Cytotoxic Paullone Bearing a TEMPO Free Radical from the HSA Hydrogel: An EPR Spectroscopic Characterization

“…Furthermore, with the growing importance of theranostics in oncology, new possibilities have been opened up for imaging, particularly multimodal imaging [11,12]. Although various theranostic platforms have been developed, their translation from animal studies to clinics remains challenging [13]. In light of this, there is still a need for the improvement of proposed methods and the involvement of other imaging techniques and probes that could be beneficial for personalized cancer care.…”

Enhancement of gold nanorods‐assisted photothermal treatment on cancer with laser power in stepwise modulation

“…Photothermal therapy (PTT) has drawn great attention as a minimally invasive or noninvasive method that involves the physical interactions between laser light and natural/synthetic chromophores to destruct cancer cells through direct and selective thermal decomposition. As PTT becomes a promising treatment modality in oncology, a great interest in designing the synthetic photo‐absorbing agents has been arising to pursue successful PTT outcomes for potential clinical applications 1 . For instance, gold nanoparticles (GNPs) has been widely employed as a novel photothermal agent because of its stability, good surface modification, and rapid heat conversion of light 2 .…”

“…As PTT becomes a promising treatment modality in oncology, a great interest in designing the synthetic photo-absorbing agents has been arising to pursue successful PTT outcomes for potential clinical applications. 1 For instance, gold nanoparticles (GNPs) has been widely employed as a novel photothermal agent because of its stability, good surface modification, and rapid heat conversion of light. 2 Gold nanorods (GNRs) with laser light have been applied to treat deeply-located tumors owing to their strong absorption of near-infrared (NIR) wavelengths.…”

Bioinspired soft nanovesicles for site‐selective cancer imaging and targeted therapies

“…Over the years, numerous nanobiotechnology (Bindra et al, 2021; Huang et al, 2018; Jain et al, 2021; Patel et al, 2022; Shi et al, 2017) and cellular‐based therapeutic strategies (Basar et al, 2020; Findeisen et al, 2021; Fischbach et al, 2013; Ullah et al, 2015; Yu et al, 2020) have been applied for targeted cancer therapy although the cost of treatment is rising continuously (J. Herrmann, 2020; Schmidt et al, 2020; Vokinger et al, 2020). Systemic administration and delivery of therapeutic probes viz., anticancer drugs on target site have been affected by off‐targeting that lead to design of localized therapies with low efficacy and high toxicity (Genard et al, 2017; Pich et al, 2019; Van der Jeught et al, 2018; Vokinger et al, 2020; Ward et al, 2020).…”

“…Over the years, numerous nanobiotechnology (Bindra et al, 2021;Huang et al, 2018;Jain et al, 2021;Patel et al, 2022;Shi et al, 2017) and cellular-based therapeutic strategies (Basar et al, 2020;Findeisen et al, 2021;Fischbach et al, 2013;Ullah et al, 2015;Yu et al, 2020) have been applied for targeted cancer therapy although the cost of treatment is rising continuously (J. Herrmann, 2020;Schmidt et al, 2020;Vokinger et al, 2020).…”