Page - (000349) - in Biomedical Chemistry: Current Trends and Developments

Mónica Ferreira, Patrick Almeida, Mohammad-Ali Shahbazi, Alexandra Correia and Hélder A. Santos* 3.5 Current Trends and Developments for Nanotechnology in Cancer Abstract: In spite of the incessant development in medicine and technology, cancer continues to be one of the leading causes of death worldwide. Conventional systems for cancer therapy that are available in the market have limited and unspecific access to tumor sites. Thus, in the recent years, nanotechnology has been applied to the field of medicine, opening new avenues to the treatment, diagnosis, and monitoring of cancer diseases. This horizon has become closer with a considerable number of nano-formulations being recently approved for commercialization or reaching preclinical and clinical stages. In this context, remarkable advances in nanotechnology led to the emergence of nanodelivery systems that can specifically target an extensive variety of malignant tissues, control precisely the release of the cargos, as well as to improve the biological effects of the immunostimulatory molecules via different mechanisms for cancer immunotherapy. In addition, imaging techniques combined with nanotechnology render extraordinary sensitive and powerful diagnostic and imaging tools. Multifunctional systems encompassing both therapeutic and diagnostic functions provide great advantage for tracking, in real time, the drug payloads delivered to the tumour site. The bench-to-bedside translation of the nanomedicines and technologies have introduced a new era in the design and development of innovative, but simultaneously complex targeting nanoparticles for delivery of both therapeutic and diagnostic agents to tumors. In this chapter, we focus on the current trends and developments of nanotechnology for cancer, highlighting some of the most advanced drug delivery nanosystems, targeting strategies, the nanotools used for cancer imaging and diagnostics, as well as the recent nanotechnological approaches used for cancer immunotherapy. Keywords: Nanotechnology, nanomedicine, drug delivery, targeting, cancer immunotherapy, diagnostics, imaging