*5.2. Nanoparticles-Based Probes*

Nanoparticles have been emerging with widespread attention in MI, drug delivery, and disease treatment. Nanoparticles have brought their potential as MI agents to TC, primarily through their applicability in fluorescence imaging, ultrasound, and MRI [154,155]. These modalities enable nanoparticles to accumulate in cells by activation through US, light, temperature, and pH change, depending on the nanoparticle structures and their surface molecules. The ligand options for targeted nanoparticles are somewhat limited. Antibodies and peptides are the primary ligand choices due to their specific affinity to targets in TC fields. Although applications of targeted nanoparticles in TC have so far been limited,

there have been publications investigating nanoparticles conjugated to antibodies targeting epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) or Src homology 2 (SH2) domain-containing phosphatase 2 (SHP2) [154,155].

**Figure 14.** Time-lapse fluorescence imaged post-injection of Cy5-labeled TC-6 (**upper**) or library control (**lower**) in a TPC1 xenograft model. Reproduced with permission from [16], copyright 2016 American Association for Cancer Research.
