Stratagems for Breast Cancer Management in the Era of Nanotheranostics

Breast cancer undoubtedly tops the charts as one of the most common forms of malignancy with 25.8% of rate incidence, amongst all the reported cancers in women globally. It is no wonder, the number of fatalities over the last 30 years have gone up as a result of changes in risk factor profiles, better cancer registration, and detection control. Considering the increasing incidence of one of its worst forms, triple negative breast cancer, relative to other kinds, the role of smart nanotheranostic approaches have become more indispensable for achieving high specificity, effective screening and tracking (in order to thwart the peril of false positives and superfluous biopsies), improved diagnosis, along with therapeutic efficacy and utmost safety potential. Such nanotheranostic systems could be designed in a manner (by combining with chemotherapies, hormonal therapies biological therapies or immunotherapies) to annihilate specific tumor sites and stubborn breast cancer stem cells via novel strategies such as local heat and reactive oxygen species to prevent tumor relapse. Therefore, owing to dearth of feasible diagnostic techniques, nanotheranostic systems could pave the way to simultaneously diagnose the disease along with delivery of anticancer compounds selectively to breast cancer cells. Several imaging dyes/radioactive compounds, polymeric nanoparticles, micellar systems, lipid vesicular systems, contrasting agents, carbon nanotubes, dendrimers and ligand based targeted nanocarriers have been implicated for advanced breast cancer theranostic applications include identifying distinct metastatic locations of malignant tumors. The present outlay of literature aims to comprehend the basic understanding of the etiology, pathophysiological mechanisms depending upon the stage and molecular subtypes (luminal A, luminal B, HER-2 negative enriched, and basal-like), existing therapeutic regimens (including mix of multiple modalities primarily surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, hormonal treatment, and biological therapies), recent nanotheranostic carriers for breast cancer therapy, as well as associated safety and hazard problems are being tested in the field of oncology.