Cancer nanotechnology: Recent trends and developments

Cancer is one of the leading causes of death worldwide. Deaths from cancer are continuously rising worldwide with a projection of about 12 million deaths from cancer in 2030. Hence, over the past few years, tremendous attention has been given to the cancer related research and there has been an outstanding progress in the basic cancer biology. The present article deals with the recent developments in cancer nanotechnologies and its potential application in cancer therapeutics. Nanotechnology is one of the most rapidly growing fields in the 21st century. It may be defined as the creation of materials, drugs and devices that are used to manipulate matter of size in the range of 1-100nm. Nanotechnology has found its applications in many fields related to medicine including novel drug delivery systems, biotechnology to name a few. Many different types of nanosystems have been utilized in diagnostics and therapeutics of various diseases. To subside the disadvantages of conventional cancer therapeutics, nanotechnology has been given considerable attention. In this paper, the current nanotechnologies that can be utilized in oncological interventions will be discussed. These mainly include arrays of nanocantilevers, nanotubes and nanowires for multiplexing detection, multifunctional injectable nanovectors for therapeutics and diagnostics.