Polymer Coated Nanoparticles for Therapeutic and Diagnostic Applications

Dear Colleagues,

Nanotechnology in medicine offers exciting opportunities in developing nanomaterials for potentiating disease treatment, early diagnostic, prognosis and monitor treatment progression owing to their improved pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of nanotherapeutics.  Selected nanotherapeutics with suitable size, shape, composition, surface charge and functionalization have shown to accumulate in pathological sites while minimizing drugs accumulation elsewhere in the body compared to delivering the drugs without nanoparticle formulation.  A common strategy in designing nanotherapeutic is to encapsulate the drug within the core or conjugated onto the shell of nanoparticles.  In particular, polymer-coated nanoparticles serves as an attractive and modular platform for achieving optimal and tunable nanoparticle size, biocompatibility, surface charge and the ability to deliver toxic cargo and immunotherapy agent upon reaching the disease site.  Since the first FDA approved nanotherapeutic, Doxil, there has been a surge in research publication in developing nanotherapeutic for various disease treatment and diagnostic application.  While nanotherapeutics have shown improved targeting ability, drug solubility, and therapeutic index, and simultaneously reduced systemic toxicity and immunogenicity, the delivery efficiency of nanotherapeutics is sub-optimal.  Over the past 15 years, the nanotherapeutic delivery efficiency has been low with a delivery efficiency hovers ~0.7% in preclinical studies. Low delivery efficiency posed many issues including toxicity in vital organs, increased in the cost of drug and the reduction in treatment efficacy.  To overcome these challenges in delivering nanoparticle therapeutic in vivo, many works has been focused on developing "smart" nanodrug which are responsive to a specific condition within the tumor microenvironment such pH depletion, elevation of tumor-associated enzymes or towards external stimuli such as ultrasound, light, heat and magnetic field has garnered much research interest.  These smart nanodrug are engineered to first exhibit optimal size, surface charge and characteristic for tumor accumulation during blood circulation.  Upon reaching the targeted tumor microenvironment, the nanoparticle will transform into a more cell-interactive manner such as releasing the drug cargo, and enhanced interaction with cell surface upon stimulated with biological or external stimuli. 

In this Special Issues of Polymer Coated Nanoparticles for Therapeutic and Diagnostic Applications, new and novel approaches in the preparation of the stimuli-responsive nanodrug for therapeutic and/or diagnostic application are solicited.    Review articles or research papers exploring various strategy in potentiating anticancer therapy using nanomaterials, multifunctional organic and inorganic nanoparticles as theranostic agent, nanoimmunotherapy and the preparation of nanotherapeutic for combinatorial therapy by releasing orthogonal treatment to the disease site without causing systemic toxicity. 

Prof. Pei Yuin Keng
Guest Editor

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• polymer-coated nanoparticles
• stimuli-responsive nanoparticles
• nanotherapeutics
• nanoimmunotherapy
• theranostic
• cancer therapy
• drug delivery
• combinatorial therapy
• molecular imaging
• nuclear medicine