Nanomaterials for Biosensing, Bioimaging and Therapy: From Cancer to Alzheimer's Disease

Dear Colleagues,

Biosensing and bioimaging are two key technological areas that are highly indispensable for the next generation of point-of-care devices. Targeted drug delivery and therapy is another emerging paradigm in the field of theranostic nanomedicine. This Special Issue attempts to garner advances in these three areas (imaging, sensing, and therapy) with the advent of nanotechnology for both cancer and neurodegenerative diseases (Alzheimer's disease (AD) and Parkinson's).  

Nanomaterials, in particular nanoparticles (NPs), have been widely used for biosensing, bioimaging and targeted drug delivery in various disease models. Typical examples of NPs include plasmonic Au; CdSe/ZnS, carbon, graphene quantum dots (QDs); magnetic NPs; upconversion NPs; and transition-metal ion-doped QDs. Functionalized NPs with antibodies, peptides, oligonucleotides are generally used for specific targeting of cells and animal tissues.

This Special Issue will focus on recent advances in various nanomaterials and NPs that can be used as probes for sensing (e.g., protein detection, fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) biosensors) and imaging (cancer and Alzheimer's disease cell/animal imaging), using optical imaging, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), computed tomography (CT), and other multimodal imaging techniques, and NPs as drug vehicles for targeted delivery and therapy.

Topic to be covered (but not limited to the following):

• Nanomaterials for cancer and neurodegenerative diseases (Parkinson's or Alzheimer's)
• Quantum dots for in-vitro cell and in-vivo animal imaging of tumors
• Bio-functionalized quantum dots with prostate-specific membrane antigen, Her2, EGFR for prostate and breast cancer diagnostics, and Alzheimer's disease
• Transition-metal ion-doped QDs for biosensing and bioimaging
• Lanthanide-doped upconversion NPs for imaging and therapy of cancer and Alzheimer's disease
• Nanoparticles as contrast agents for CT/MRI and multimodal imaging
• Nanoparticles for photothermal therapy of cancer
• Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) plasmonic nanosensors for pH monitoring in single cells and detection of specific genes for diseases
• Plasmonic nanosensors for cellular biosensing, diagnostics and high throughput screening
• Nanoparticles for the detection of specific target DNA sequences associated with diseases

Prof. Dr. Subramanian Tamil Selvan
Guest Editor

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