Cancer Theranostics: An Introduction

Theranostics is a portmanteau of therapeutics and diagnostics. It can be diagnosis followed by therapy to stratify patients who will likely respond to a given treatment. It can also be therapy followed by diagnosis to monitor early response to treatment and predict treatment efficacy. It is also possible that diagnostics and therapeutics are codeveloped. For example, nanoplatforms can be designed to codeliver imaging and therapy components; antibodies can be labeled for imaging and conjugated with payload as antibodydrug conjugate (ADC) for therapy. Cancer theranostics, as the name implies, represents a combinatorial diagnosis and therapeutic approach to cancer disease and aims to reduce delays in treatment and ease patient care, and appears to be essential for personalized cancer treatment. Note that in some cases theranostics is also spelled as theragnostics. A keyword search of PubMed on January 7, 2011, right before the launch of new SCI journal Theranostics, only found 95 items for “theranostic,” 63 items for “theranostics,” 29 items for “theragnostic,” and 21 items for “theragnostics.” In the past two years, literature related to theranostics grew exponentially. As of October 18, 2013, a PubMed search found 587 items for “theranostic,” 562 items for “theranostics,” 85 items for “theragnostic,” and 48 items for “theragnostics.” There are pieces of information related to theranostics in the literature. A dedicated journal named Theranostics (www.thno.org/) was launched to open up a forum to exchange clinical and scientific information for the diagnostic and therapeutic molecular and nanomedicine community and allied professions involved in the efforts of integrating molecular imaging and molecular therapy [1]. As an evolving multidisciplinary field catering to the unmet needs of the medical world, cancer theranostics include but are not limited to the following: