Recent therapeutic applications of the theranostic principle with dendrimers in oncology

At the intersection between treatment and diagnosis, nanoparticles technologies are strongly impacting the development of both therapeutic and diagnostic agents. Consequently, the development of novel modalities for concomitant noninvasive therapy and diagnostics known as theranostics as a single platform has gained significant interests. These multifunctional theranostic platforms include carbon-based nanomaterials (e.g., carbon nanotubes), drug conjugates, aliphatic polymers, micelles, vesicles, core-shell nanoparticles, microbubbles and dendrimers bearing different contrast agents and drugs, such as cytotoxic compounds in the oncology domain. Dendrimers emerged as a new class of highly tunable hyperbranched polymers, and have been developed as useful theranostic platforms. Magnetic resonance imaging, gamma scintigraphy, computed tomography and optical imaging are the main techniques developed with dendrimers in the theranostic domain in oncology. Different imaging agents have been used such as Gd(III), 19F, Fe2O3 (MRI), 76Br (PET), 111In, 88Y, 153Gd, 188Re, 131I (SPECT), 177Lu, gold (CT) and boronated groups, siliconnaphthalocyanines, dialkylcarbocyanines and QDs (optical imaging dyes).