Integration of nanotechnology into the treatment of various diseases such as cancers represents a mainstream in the current and future research due to the limitations of traditional clinical diagnosis and therapy. The early detection of cancer has been universally accepted to be essential for treatment. However, it remains challenging to detect tumors at an early stage. For instance, the goal of molecular imaging in breast cancer is to diagnose the tumor with approximately 100–1000 cells, compared to the traditional techniques which may require more than a million cells for accurate clinical diagnosis. On another hand, anticancer drugs are designed to simply kill cancer cells, and their entrance into healthy organs or tissues is undesirable due to the severe side effects. In addition, the rapid and widespread distribution of anticancer drugs into nontargeted organs and tissues requires a lot of drugs with high cost. These difficulties have largely limited the successful therapy of cancer.

Nanomaterials are anticipated to revolutionize the cancer diagnosis and therapy. The development of multifunctional polymeric nanoparticles allows for the early detection of cancers. The construction of intelligent polymeric nanosystems can be used as controlled delivery vehicles to improve the therapy efficiency of anticancer drugs, that is, such vehicles are capable of delivering drugs to predetermined locations and then releasing them with preprogrammed rates in response to the changes of environmental conditions such as pH and temperature. Besides polymers, these nanomaterials can also be composed of supraparamagnetic iron oxide, carbon nanotube, metallic nanoshell, core-shell aggregate, or composites. These nanomaterials represent new directions for more effective drug administration in cancer.

This special issue of the Journal of Nanomaterials will cover a wide range of nanomaterials for cancer diagnosis and therapy. It will mainly focus on the preparations, characterizations, functionalizations, and properties of nanoparticles, nanostructured coatings, films, membranes, nanoporous materials, nanocomposites, and biomedical devices. Fundamental understanding of the basic mechanisms on material and biological processes related to the unique nanoscale properties of the materials will be the highlights of this special issue.

Papers are solicited in, but not limited to, the following areas:

• Synthesis and functionalization of polymer nanoparticle/nanomicelle/nanocomplex
• Polymer nanoparticle/hydrogl for drug delivery
• Synthesis of intelligent nanogel
• Hydrogel in nanoscale sensing
• Supraparamagnetic nanoparticle for magnetic resonance imaging applications
• Carbon nanotube-based devices for drug delivery
• Core-shell nanoparticle for molecular imaging
• Metallic nanoshell for drug delivery
• Nanoporous and nanoscaled materials for drug delivery
• Nanotechnologies for targeted delivery
• Controlled drug-delivery nanovehicles
• Biopolymers for drug/gene delivery and therapy
• Injectable hydrogels for tissue regenerations
• Bionanoparticles and their biomedical applications
• Nanomaterials for biosensors
• Toxicology of nanomaterials

Before submission authors should carefully read over the journal's Author Guidelines, which are located at http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jnm/guidelines/. Prospective authors should submit an electronic copy of their complete manuscript through the journal Manuscript Tracking System at http://mts.hindawi.com/ according to the following timetable: