Prospects of nano-theranostic approaches against breast and cervical cancer

The bottleneck on therapeutics and diagnostics is removed by an alternate approach known as theranostics which combines both therapeutics and diagnostics within a single platform. Due to this “all in one” nature of theranostics, it is now extensively applied in the medicinal field mainly in cancer treatment over the conventional therapy. Recently, FDA approval of lutetium 177 (177Lu) DOTATATE and 177Lu–PSMA-based radionuclide theranostics are clinically used and very few theranostics specific to breast cancer are in clinical trials. In this review, we are willing to draw special attention to the application of theranostics in the most relevant cancers in women, the breast and the cervical as these cancers affect women harshly but talked very silently due to the social restrictions and discriminations mainly in rural areas of developing and under developing countries. This approach not only combines therapeutics and diagnostics but targeting moieties can also be accommodated for the precise medication. Herein, our main objective is to enlighten the broader aspects of different kinds of theranostic devices based on radioisotopes, nanoparticles, graphene quantum dots, dendrimers and their fruitful application against breast and cervical cancer. The development of synthetic nano-theranostics was reported by accommodating therapeutic drugs, imaging probes and targeting ligands through conjugation or encapsulation. The imaging modalities like optical fluorescence, photosensitizers and radiotracers are used to get the diagnostic images through NIR, PET, MRI and CT/SPECT to detect the progress of cancer non-invasively and also at the same time targeting ligands such as antibodies, proteins and peptides in attachment with the theranostics enhances the therapeutic efficacy in addition to the clarity in diagnostics. The applications of theranostics from the last decade with their present scenario in clinics and future perspectives, as well as the pitfalls with the hurdles that still leave questions to rethink from the root are also been discussed in this review.