Novel Biomaterials for Image-Guided Drug Delivery

Dear Colleagues,

Since its discovery, by combining therapeutics with medical imaging, image-guided drug delivery (IGDD) has revolutionized disease diagnosis and treatment. Traditionally, drug administration suffered from inefficient targeting and high off-target deposition, but IGDD offers precise drug delivery guided by imaging. Medical imaging modalities, like fluorescence imaging, MRI, CT, PET, and SPECT, have been significantly exploited in the past few years, yielding successful results in imaging-guided surgery and other therapeutic applications, such as drug delivery, payload delivery for photothermal and photodynamic therapies, immunotherapy, chemo- and chemodynamic therapy, sonodynamic therapy, and many more.

However, the recent upsurge in nanotechnology and biomaterials research has unlocked new avenues in the domain of near-infrared imaging (NIR) and photoacoustic imaging (PA) modalities. Recent developments suggest that these newer imaging modalities could be essential in future IGDD systems for the precise measurement of diseased microenvironment and their therapy. Herein, biomimetic probes further innovate IGDD systems by making them cheap and non-toxic. Meanwhile, stimulus-responsive probes activate within disease microenvironments, aiding in therapy and imaging.

Experts working in these domains are cordially invited to submit research and review manuscripts. Innovations in IGDD have improved its application potential across various scientific fields and medical imaging modalities.

Dr. Bing Guo
Guest Editor

Dr. Shubham Roy
Guest Editor Assistant

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