Cancer Theranostics: An Emerging Field for Cancer Research, Diagnosis and Therapy

Abstract

According to the World Health Organization (WHO) report in 2022, cancer is a leading cause of death worldwide, accounting for nearly 10 million deaths in 2020, or nearly one in six deaths, with cases amounting to breast cancer (2.26 million cases), lungs cancer (2.21 million cases), colon and rectum (1.93 million cases), prostate cancer (1.41 million cases) amongst several others. Many cancers can be cured if detected early and treated effectively. At a time like this, the world is in dire need of better and earlier method of cancer detection and diagnosis – this is where cancer theranostic comes in. Cancer theranostics, as the name implies combines cancer diagnosis and cancer therapy with the aim of achieving early diagnosis, accurate molecular imaging, and precise treatment for cancer or tumor cells at the right time and dispensing proper dose of medication, followed by real-time monitoring of treatment efficacy, it aims to improve multi-step procedures and reduce delay in treatment of patients. With the molecular imaging approach in cancer theranostics such as magnetic resonance imaging (mMRI), positron emission tomography (PET), single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), ultrasound (US), photoacoustic imaging (PAI), and optical imaging (OI), all of which have overtime been proven to be efficient in the early detection of cancer or tumor cells, and as such help in early treatment and eradication of the disease, it would be right to say that with advances in the precision of identifying biomarkers and imaging and mapping of tumor or cancer cells, cancer treatment in years to come would give an excellent accuracy in diagnosis and treatment, and such treatment would be cheap and affordable.