Organic-based nanoparticles for theranostic uses

Theranostic nanomedicine integrates diagnostic and therapeutic functionalities within a single platform, offering significant potential for precision medicine. While inorganic nanomaterials have historically dominated this field due to their unique imaging and therapeutic properties, their clinical translation is limited by poor biodegradability, long-term accumulation, and potential toxicity. Consequently, increasing attention has shifted toward organic and hybrid organic/inorganic nanoplatforms with improved biocompatibility and degradability. This review highlights recent advances in organic-based theranostic systems, including hybrid nanostructures, polymeric nanoparticles, lipid-based carriers, and carbon-based materials. Hybrid platforms combine organic matrices with inorganic components to enable multimodal imaging and synergistic therapies, though concerns related to inorganic persistence remain. Fully organic systems, particularly polymeric and lipid-based nanostructures, offer high tunability, efficient drug delivery, and versatile functionalization, supporting imaging modalities such as fluorescence, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and nuclear imaging alongside therapeutic strategies including chemotherapy, photothermal, and photodynamic therapies. Carbon-based nanomaterials further expand this landscape through intrinsic optical properties and multifunctionality. Despite substantial progress, key challenges, including scalable synthesis, reproducibility, regulatory complexity, and incomplete understanding of in vivo behavior, continue to hinder clinical translation. Nonetheless, emerging evidence indicates that organic and hybrid platforms can achieve theranostic performance comparable to, or surpassing, that of inorganic systems. Future efforts will focus on fully biodegradable designs, biomimetic strategies, and integration with advanced technologies to enhance clinical applicability. Organic-based nanotheranostics thus represent a promising direction for safer and more effective next-generation nanomedicine. Graphical Abstract Schematic overview of organic-based theranostic nanoplatforms for precision nanomedicine, highlighting the main classes of nanostructures, their integration of multimodal imaging and therapeutic functions, and their application in targeted, image-guided cancer therapy. This image was partially created with the assistance of the generative AI tool ChatGPT (OpenAI).