title: Development of nanotheranostics against metastatic breast cancer--A focus on the biology & mechanistic approaches.
abstract: Treatment for metastatic breast cancer still remains to be a challenge since the currently available diagnostic and treatment strategies fail to detect the micro-metastasis resulting in higher mortality rate. Moreover, the lack of specificity to target circulating tumor cells is also a factor. In addition, currently available imaging modalities to identify the secondaries vary with respect to various metastatic anatomic areas and size of the tumor. The drawbacks associated with the existing clinical management of the metastatic breast cancer demands the requirement of multifunctional nanotheranostics, which could diagnose at macro- and microscopic level, target the solid as well as circulating tumor cells and control further progression with the simultaneous evaluation of treatment response in a single platform. However, without the understanding of the biology as well as preferential homing ability of circulating tumor cells at distant organs, it is quite impossible to address the existing challenges in the present diagnostics and therapeutics against the breast cancer metastasis. Hence this review outlines the severity of the problem, basic biology and organ specificity with the sequential steps for the secondary progression of disease followed by the various mechanistic approaches in diagnosis and therapy at different stages.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Nanotechnology & Advanced Biomaterials School of Chemical & Biotechnology, SASTRA University, Tamil Nadu 613 401, India. Electronic address: anuradha@bioengg.sastra.edu.
authors.forename: Anuradha
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Subramanian
authors.affiliation: Centre for Nanotechnology & Advanced Biomaterials School of Chemical & Biotechnology, SASTRA University, Tamil Nadu 613 401, India.
authors.forename: Amrutha
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Manigandan
authors.affiliation: Centre for Nanotechnology & Advanced Biomaterials School of Chemical & Biotechnology, SASTRA University, Tamil Nadu 613 401, India.
authors.forename: P R
authors.initials: PR
authors.lastname: Sivashankari
authors.affiliation: Centre for Nanotechnology & Advanced Biomaterials School of Chemical & Biotechnology, SASTRA University, Tamil Nadu 613 401, India.
authors.forename: Swaminathan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Sethuraman
mesh_terms: D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000188:drug therapy* / Q000378:metabolism / Q000473:pathology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D049329:Nanostructures / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D009362:Neoplasm Metastasis; D009360:Neoplastic Cells, Circulating / Q000187:drug effects*; D000068936:Theranostic Nanomedicine
keywords: Breast cancer; Metastasis; Nanoparticles; SPIONs; Theranostics