Inorganic hybrid nanoparticles in cancer theranostics: understanding their combinations for better clinical translation

Drug resistance, tumor heterogeneity, and poor selectivity make cancer treatment with current modalities a challenging and complicated task. Careful planning of diagnosis and therapy is required to build new strategies for treatment and management of cancer. The amalgamation of therapeutics and diagnostics in a single nano agent, known as theranostics is now possible due to the emergence of nanotechnology. Theranostics offers opportunities for personalized medicine by real-time monitoring of drug accumulation and dynamic modification of treatment depending on individual patient needs. Thus potential to reform disease management is held by theranostic nanoparticles. Amongst other nanosystems, inorganic nanoparticles have been widely used for developing theranostic drug delivery systems due to their favorable intrinsic properties. The last decade has seen a surge in development of such theranostic nanoparticles in which various inorganic materials in different combinations have been engineered to maximize the output with respect to specific applications. For example, Fe₃O₄@Au nanoparticles were developed for MRI, hyperthermia and magnetically controlled drug delivery. Several such combinations leading to innovative theranostic applications and their underlying mechanisms have been highlighted in this review. A review of patents and clinical trials of inorganic theranostic nanoparticles is also presented through which we understood that clinical translation still remains in the nascent stage. Thus, it is necessary to find and understand reasons for lack of clinical translations. Therefore, we have discussed the challenges associated with bench-to-bed translation of such inorganic nanoparticles which show immense potential in vitro but fail to deliver in long run.