Nanotheranostics For Personalized Medicine

Book excerpt: The application of nanotechnology in the biomedical field, known as nanomedicine, has gained much interest in the recent past as a versatile strategy for selective drug delivery and diagnostic purposes. The nanotheranostic approach, which aims to combine both therapeutic and imaging/diagnostic functionalities, is characterized by a strong pluridisciplinarity where the chemistry of materials, bioconjugate chemistry, pharmaceutical technology, drug delivery, imaging, and pharmacology, work together. Nanotheranostics combine simultaneous non-invasive diagnosis and treatment of diseases with the exciting possibility to monitor drug release and distribution in real time; thus offering the opportunity to optimize treatment outcomes in cancer and other severe diseases. Clinical applications of nanotheranostics would enable earlier detection and treatment of diseases, and earlier assessment of the response, thus allowing to identify patients which would potentially respond to therapy and have higher possibilities of a favorable outcome.Nanotheranostics for Personalized Medicine presents an integrated and transdisciplinary description of nanotheranostics. It provides principles of imaging techniques and concrete examples of advances and challenges in the development of nanotheranostics for personalized medicine.This book is written for students (Bachelors to Doctoral level) as well as experienced researchers, in academia or the industry, interested in this emerging concept in the nanomedicine field.