An Overview on the Application of Nanodiagnostics in Cancer

In the battle against cancer, timely diagnosis is critical for successful treatment. The major limitation in detecting cancer at early development stages is the unavailability of sensitive and specific detection methods. Nanobiology combines biology with physics and chemistry to generate several new areas such as nanodiagnostics and nanotheranostics. Nanodiagnostics involve the development of new strategies and innovations to enhance the current detection methods in tumor biology. Another important aspect of nanodiagnostics is to improve personalized cancer detection and real-time monitoring of treatments assisted by imaging modalities. Nanotheranostics combines therapy and diagnosis in a single model for cancer detection and treatment thus providing the advantage of targeted drug delivery and fewer side effects to normal tissues. In this review, we have outlined diverse nanoparticle systems for early cancer detection and therapy. A wide variety of nanomaterial-based approaches such as nanobubbles, quantum dots, liposomes, or nanotubes demonstrate huge potential in improving imaging methods to screen and monitor cancer progression. Although a significant amount of contributions have been directed to develop nanodiagnostics systems, they are still at preclinical stage. Thus, it is a dynamic area for research with encouraging development towards the clinical stage.