Title:Application of Efficient Nanoparticles for Early Diagnosis and Treatment of Cancer
VOLUME: 16 ISSUE: 8
Author(s):Athanasios Alexiou, Charalampos Vairaktarakis, Vasilis Tsiamis and Ghulam Md Ashraf
Affiliation:PostDoc Fellow Researcher, Bioinformatics & Human Electrophysiology Laboratory, Department of Informatics, IonianUniversity, Plateia Tsirigoti 7, 49100 Corfu, Greece.
Keywords:Cancer diagnosis and treatment, drug delivery, gold nanoparticles, nanomedicine, quantum dots.
Abstract:Cancer is considered as a prevalent cause of human deaths and undoubtedly, is the most complex disease
with multiple cellular physiological systems involved. During the last decade, the application of nanotechnological
products for cancer treatment has received considerable attention. These sophisticated tools and materials
treat cancer though the early diagnosis, the prediction, the prevention and the personalized therapy. This technology
enabled the development of nanoscale particles that can be conjugated with one or multiple functional molecules
simultaneously. Nanoparticles have the capability to be delivered directly through blood vessels to the tumor
site and interact with targeted tumor-specific proteins located inside or on the surface of cancer cells, since their
size is a hundred to thousand times smaller than cancer cells. In this review, comprehensive outline of all the latest scientific and technological
applications such as quantum dots and gold nanoparticles alongside with their applications in cancer diagnosis and treatment have
been presented.