New methods in the diagnosis of cancer and gene therapy of cancer based on nanoparticles

Abstract

Cancer is one of the leading cause of death in the world with the prevalence of >10 million mortalities annually. Current cancer treatments include surgical intervention, radiation, and taking chemotherapeutic drugs, which often kill the healthy cells and result in toxicity in patients. Therefore, researchers are looking for ways to be able to eliminate just cancerous cells. Intra-tumor heterogeneity of cancerous cells is the main obstacle on the way of an effective cancer treatment. However, better comprehension of molecular basis of tumor and the advent of new diagnostic technologies can help to improve the treatment of various cancers. Therefore, study of epigenetic changes, gene expression of cancerous cells and employing methods that enable us to correct or minimize these changes is critically important. In this paper, we will review the recent advanced strategies being used in the field of cancer research.

Are nanomaterials really safe?

“…With regard to clinical science, the potential applications of nanotechnology are huge, and has already generated a range of promising examples, such as conceptually new medical diagnostics, imaging agents and therapeutics (using new drug-delivery platforms) for detecting and treating diseases [18,[26][27][28][29] in the early stages . The advantages of early detection are not limited to cancer, and many other disorders such as Alzheimer disease are presumed to cause disruptive changes well before clinical manifestations become obvious, but profoundly nanotechnology provides an unprecedented opportunity to build better detection strategies and tools, and places the rapidly evolving field of [19, 'nanodiagnostics' at the front line in the war on diseases 30,31] . Although, pharmacogenomics focuses on the identification of genetic variants thatinfluence drug effects, typically through alterations in pharmacokinetics and new emerging analytical approaches have facilitated the evolution of a discovery model from hitherto promising drug candidates towards agnostic genome-wide analyses of patient populations with specific drug-response phenotypes highlighting "toxicity or desired pharmacological [32,33] effects .…”

Combination Strategies for Targeted Delivery of Nanoparticles for Cancer Therapy

“…Nanoplatforms allow more accurate, non-invasive and real-time cancer diagnosis and monitoring during therapy using magnetic resonance imaging, ultrasonography, etc. (Alexis et al 2008;Baetke et al 2015;Zaimy et al 2017) Adjuvant nanotechnological devices are used in cancer interventions such as radiotherapy (Wu et al 2016), photodynamic therapy (Clement et al 2017) and sonodynamic therapy (Xu et al 2016), which are capable of achieving considerably higher precision of treatment and reduced side effects. After decades of developing the understanding of nanotechnology, cancerrelated nano-treatments have undergone extensive preclinical and clinical-trial studies and shown promising results (H. .…”

Tumor gene therapy by systemic delivery of plasmid DNA with cell-penetrating peptides

“…Cancer is one of the leading causes of death worldwide, with the number of new cases expected to rise in the next two decades. The disease is characterized by genetic abnormalities, with 125 cancer‐promoting genes having been found so far, making gene therapy a prospective way to treat cancer . Gene therapy involves the genetic modification of a patient's cells by transferring genes, gene segments, or regulatory oligonucleotides into the cells.…”