Nanotechnology: A Significant Role in the Detection and Treatment of Cancer

Cancer has become the leading cause of death in today's world. It is a highly complex disease to understand because it entails multiple cellular physiological systems, such as cell signalling and apoptosis. Thus, the most common cancer treatments are limited to chemotherapy, radiation and surgery. Limitations in cancer treatment are a result of current challenges observed in cancer therapies today, including lack of early disease detection, non-specific systemic distribution, inadequate drug concentrations reaching the tumour and inability to monitor therapeutic responses. Poor drug delivery and residence at the target site leads to significant complications, such as multi-drug resistance. In order to overcome these limitations, we have highlighted peculiar features of nanotechnology, which definitely has the potential to offer solutions to these current obstacles in cancer therapies, because of its unique size (1-100nm) and large surface-to-volume ratios. Nanotechnologies may have properties of self-assembly, stability, specificity, drug encapsulation and biocompatibility as a result of their material composition. In this review, we have strictly focussed on nanotechnology and have tried to give a push for the acceleration of the application of nanotechnologies in cancer research and clinical development. Nanotechnology is being applied to cancer in two broad areas: the development of nanovectors, such as nanoparticles, which can be loaded with drugs or imaging agents and then targeted to tumours, and high throughput nanosensor devices for detecting the biological signatures of cancer. Combined, such technologies could lead to earlier diagnosis and better treatment for patients with cancer.