Theranostic designs of biomaterials for precision medicine in cancer therapy

Theranostic biomaterials have been creating great new opportunities in developing precision medicine in cancer treatment. Moreover, there exist up-coming potentials to find a new paradigm change in cancer treatment when theranostic biomaterials can precisely image a biological process at the exact tumor sites. With aid of molecular imaging technology, theranostic biomaterials can visualize targets, monitor efficiency of delivery carriers as well as therapeutic responses at tumor site. Major obstacles in designing theranostic biomaterials might be what providing target-specificity to biomaterials for improving therapeutic efficacy as well as visualization in cancer treatment. By which, we can find ways to minimize unwanted side effects to normal tissues in cancer therapy. This review focuses on how theranostic biomaterials can be designed with tumor-specific fluorescence imaging probes, especially tumor-specific activatable imaging probes, which in turn can be switched to therapeutic design with identical principle. Highlights such as designing by characteristics of cancer, finding ways to monitor therapeutic efficacy, potential benefits in theranostic biomaterials are also discussed.