Copyright © 2013 Ruibing Wang et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Nanomedicine, defined as the application of nanotechnology in the medical field, has the potential to significantly change the course of diagnostics and treatment of life-threatening diseases, such as cancer. In comparison with traditional cancer diagnostics and therapy, cancer nanomedicine provides sensitive cancer detection and/or enhances treatment efficacy with significantly minimized adverse effects associated with standard therapeutics. Cancer nanomedicine has been increasingly applied in areas including nanodrug delivery systems, nanopharmaceuticals, and nanoanalytical contrast reagents in laboratory and animal model research. In recent years, the successful introduction of several novel nanomedicine products into clinical trials and even onto the commercial market has shown successful outcomes of fundamental research into clinics. This paper is intended to examine several nanomedicines for cancer therapeutics and/or diagnostics-related applications, to analyze the trend of nanomedicine development, future opportunities, and challenges of this fast-growing area.