Molecular Imaging and Nanotechnology—Emerging Tools in Diagnostics and Therapy

Abstract

Personalized medicine is emerging as a new goal in the diagnosis and treatment of diseases. This approach aims to establish differences between patients suffering from the same disease, which allows to choose the most effective treatment. Molecular imaging (MI) enables advanced insight into molecule interactions and disease pathology, improving the process of diagnosis and therapy and, for that reason, plays a crucial role in personalized medicine. Nanoparticles are widely used in MI techniques due to their size, high surface area to volume ratio, and multifunctional properties. After conjugation to specific ligands and drugs, nanoparticles can transport therapeutic compounds directly to their area of action and therefore may be used in theranostics—the simultaneous implementation of treatment and diagnostics. This review summarizes different MI techniques, including optical imaging, ultrasound imaging, magnetic resonance imaging, nuclear imaging, and computed tomography imaging with theranostics nanoparticles. Furthermore, it explores the potential use of constructs that enables multimodal imaging and track diseases in real time.

The Role of Molecular Imaging in Personalized Medicine

“…Currently, it is not possible to use US to scan the full human body, and it is considered operator dependent. All the listed limitations can weaken US applications in personalized medicine [ 6 , 15 , 48 , 49 , 50 ].…”

“…When imaging and molecular diagnostics are used together, it becomes possible to measure abnormal cellular signalling pathways in unprecedented depth. This succinct essay demonstrates how radiotracers and nuclear imaging techniques are being developed to track drug effectiveness and, at the same time, promote the objective of individualized healthcare [ 47 , 49 , 59 , 60 , 61 ].…”

“…The most often used glucose analog is 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG). Some novel receptor-active peptides have found usage in the transport and phosphorylation of FDG, but then the FDG is stuck [ 2 , 4 , 10 , 12 , 14 , 17 , 20 , 21 , 23 , 47 , 49 , 53 , 56 , 60 , 72 , 73 , 74 , 75 , 76 , 77 , 78 , 79 ].…”

Nanobodies: COVID-19 and Future Perspectives

“…Nanobodies are expected to become important for cancer diagnosis: Molecules including monoclonal antibodies (Frigerio et al, 2021) used for PET diagnostics are useful for directed radiotherapies through the simple exchange of radioisotopes with, for instance, Lutetium 77 Lu. These radiotracers used for diagnostics and therapeutical applications are known as Theranostics (Debnath et al, 2022;Woźniak et al, 2022).…”

Molecular Imaging in Nanomedical Research 2.0

“…Woźniak and co-workers [ 6 ] reviewed different techniques (optical, ultrasound, magnetic resonance and nuclear imaging, and computed tomography) applied to theranostics nanoparticles. The authors underline how these techniques enable elucidation of the molecular interactions of these nanoparticles in different diseases, improving the process of diagnosis and therapy in personalized medicine.…”