Design and scaling up of theranostic nanoplatforms for health: towards translational studies

Royal Society of Chemistry journals Journal of Materials Chemistry B, Nanoscale, Materials Advances and Nanoscale Advances are delighted to be a formal supporter of this symposium on ‘Design and scaling up of theranostic nanoplatforms for health: towards translational studies’ and will be sponsoring two oral presentation prizes. The Awards ceremony will be held on Wednesday afternoon May 31.

The symposium will focus on the design of multifunctional hybrid nanomaterials designed for theranostics in the biomedical field but with a focus on the scaling-up of these nanomaterials for translational studies. The recent advances in breakthrough products for therapy and early diagnosis will provide a strong basis for the symposium as well as the strategies for scaling-up of products in GMP conditions and fowling guidances of the European agency of medicaments.

Scope:

Cancer is growing worldwide and its incidence continues to increase as well as mortality associated with a + 51% increase of deaths worldwide between 2002 and 2030. The move towards personalized/precision medicine and new targeted therapies requires the development of highly efficient theranostic tools able to diagnose and monitor the evolution of the disease, evaluate the structural and physiological changes in tissues and cells and to monitor the effects of treatments by imaging. In nanomedicine, the goal is to develop multimodal nanoparticles (NPs) to speed up targeted diagnosis, to increase its sensitivity, reliability and specificity for a better management of the disease (patient’s care) and to treat the disease in a specific perzonalized manner in feedback mode.

Multimodality imaging (MRI, PET, SPECT, XR, ….) with two or more imaging modalities allows integration of the strengths of individual modalities while overcoming their limitations. By incorporating anatomical and functional imaging in a common hybrid imaging platform, a synergism in the imaging capabilities can be achieved, thus making it possible to precisely visualize and delineate structural and functional information. Combining multiple sources of information in multimodal and/or hybrid medical imaging can thus increase the diagnostic and prognostic power of medical imaging significantly.  Development of rational combinations of imaging modalities and statistical image analysis pipelines is critical for improved detection of cancer and monitoring of therapeutic response. Combination of therapies (hyperthermia, chemotherapy, protontherapy, radiotherapy…) to target individual cancer-specific vulnerabilities is a way to increase the efficacy of anticancer treatment. Therefore, besides precision diagnosis, other challenges for personalized nanomedicine are to develop tools to be able to test quickly different treatments and to follow-up the effect(s) of the treatments by imaging.

For precision cancer nanomedicine to fill its promise, active targeting with affinity ligands to achieve favourable specificity and biodistribution profiles is critical for accurate detection/monitoring and therapeutic efficacy.

Such smart approaches, when translated to clinical uses, would have a great impact on the cancer management to improve patient survival and quality of life.

However for further translation in clinics of such nanoplatforms, a key step is the scaling-up of these nanoplatforms by taking into account environmental considerations and also GMP conditions. Therefore, key challenges today is the developement of scaled-up synthesis methods such a continous flow synthesis of water based synthesis and also the analysis/control of by-products at each synthesis steps.

Hot topics to be covered by the symposium:

• Design, synthesis and characterization of nanoparticles: inorganic, polymers, liposomes, dendrimers.
• Targeting strategies
• Multimodal Imaging (e.g. MRI, MPI, SPECT, PET)
• Multimodal therapy (e.g, hyperthermia, curie theraphy)
• Drug delivery
• Nanotoxicology
• In vitro and in vivo validation of nanoplatforms combining multimodal imaging and therapies
• Scaling-up strategies of the nanoplatforms synthesis
• New synthesis processes taking into account GMP and environmental considerations

Confirmed invited speakers :

Publication:

Thematic issue of Nanoscale (impact factor: 8.3)