Combining therapeutic and diagnostic tools into a single ‘theranostic’ platform lies at the forefront of cancer research. Some most promising theranostics exploit unique nuclear electronic properties lanthanoid metal gadolinium.

Theranostics is a multidisciplinary journal that publishes innovative and original research papers reflecting the field of molecular imaging, molecular therapeutics, multifunctional nanoparticle platforms, image-guided therapy, and translational nanomedicine. A broad spectrum of biomedical research that can be applied to future theranostic applications is encouraged.

INTRODUCTION To date, a growing number of advanced anticancer nanomedicines (e.g., Doxil(®), Lipoxal(®), DepoCyte(®)) have entered into different phases of clinical trials. However, most of these medicaments fail to differentiate between diseased and normal cells. They also do not have capability of real time monitoring of disease status trough on-demand imaging/sensing of target molecule(s). M...

Advances in nanotechnology have opened up a new era of diagnosis, prevention and treatment of diseases and traumatic injuries. Nanomaterials, including those with potential for clinical applications, possess novel physicochemical properties that have an impact on their physiological interactions, from the molecular level to the systemic level. There is a lack of standardized methodologies or re...

Generator-derived radionuclides for PET/CT imaging are promising for optimizing targeted radiotherapy by an individual patient-based approach, applying pre-therapeutic evaluation, as well as dosimetric calculations, and for measuring treatment response after radionuclide therapy.

Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are small bilayer lipid membrane vesicles that can be released by most cell types and detected in most body fluids. EVs exert key functions for intercellular communication via transferring their bioactive cargos to recipient cells or activating signaling pathways in target cells. Increasing evidence has shown the important regulatory effects of EVs in cardiovascular...

Construction of poly(amidoamine) (PAMAM) dendrimer-based nanoplatforms for tumor computed tomography (CT) imaging and theranostics has gained significant attention in recent years. The unique characteristics PAMAM dendrimers such as monodispersity,...

1Department of Nuclear Medicine, Second Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University School of Medicine, 88 Jiefang Road, Zhejiang, Hangzhou 310009, China 2Department of Experimental Diagnostic Imaging, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, 1515 Holcombe Boulevrd, P.O. Box 59 Houston, TX 77030, USA 3Department of Health Sciences, National Natural Science Foundation of China, Beijing, Chi...

Glycoprotein VI (GPVI), a membrane glycoprotein solely expressed in platelets and megakaryocytes, plays a critical role in thrombus formation due to collagen/GPVI-mediated platelet activation and adhesion. Recent studies have shown that surface expression of GPVI on circulating platelets is enhanced in acute cardiovascular diseases such as myocardial infarction and ischaemic stroke. Increased G...

Molecular imaging has often provided tantalizing potential for tracking theranostic agents during in vivo studies. Each in vivo imaging modality has its limitations, which has impeded the application of molecular imaging towards theranostics research. For example, Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (MRS) has been used to detect drug delivery with great molecular specificity due to the unique MR fr...