Abstract

Nanoparticles are widely used as carrier materials for biomedical applications such as functional and morphological imaging diagnosis and therapeutic drug delivery. Based on their performance in these biomedical applications, nanoparticles have attracted great interest as a platform for combining diagnostics and therapy. Research efforts are currently underway to design effective theranostic nanoparticles that enable imaging diagnosis and therapy simultaneously. Liposomes, which have been used clinically for drug delivery systems, are a principal platform for theranostic applications. This review specifically examines liposomes as a nanoscale platform to develop theranostic formulations as referring to recent publications including patents.

Keywords: Diagnostics, drug carriers, imaging, nanomedicine, nanoparticles, surface modification, theranostics.