Yang Sun, Haitao Ran* and Fan Liu Pages 1352 - 1368 ( 17 )
Background: Advances in nanotechnology have enabled the combination of disease diagnosis and therapy into a single nano package that has tremendous potential for the development of new theranostic strategies. The variety of polymer-based materials has grown exponentially over the past several decades. Such materials have great potential as carriers in disease detection imaging and image monitoring and in systems for the precise delivery of drugs to specific target sites.
Objective: In the present article, we review recent key developments in the synthesis of polymer- based materials for various medical applications and their clinical trials.
Conclusion: There is a growing range of multi-faceted, polymer-based materials with various functions. These functions include carriers for image contrast agents, drug delivery systems, and real-time image-guided systems for noninvasive or minimally invasive therapeutic procedures for cancer therapy.
Polymer, nanocarrier, theranostics, molecular imaging, targeted therapy, cancer.
Department of Ultrasound, the Second Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University; Chongqing Key Laboratory of Ultrasound Molecular Imaging, 400010 Chongqing, Department of Ultrasound, the Second Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University; Chongqing Key Laboratory of Ultrasound Molecular Imaging, 400010 Chongqing, Department of Ultrasound, the Second Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University; Chongqing Key Laboratory of Ultrasound Molecular Imaging, 400010 Chongqing