Targeted and theranostic applications for nanotechnologies in medicine: Nanostructured calcium phosphates for theranostic nanomedicine

Synthetic calcium phosphates are the most widely accepted biomaterials for the repair and reconstruction of bone tissue defects thanks to their excellent features, including biocompatibility, bioactivity, osteocondutivity, nontoxicity, and nonimmunogenicity. The recent advancements in the nanotechnological approaches to prepare calcium phosphate-based materials with tailored surface characteristics, nanometric dimensions, and colloidal stability have opened new perspectives in their use in nanomedicine. Nanomedicine is defined as the application of nanomaterials to address healthcare problems. The recent trend in this field is the achievement of theranostic nanosystems that can fulfill a therapeutic action and at the same time deliver diagnostic information through an imaging probe. Subchapter 6.3 outlines the principal characteristics of calcium phosphates to be used as promising theranostic agents and on the basis of a large literature survey, the most recent reports on multifunctional theranostic calcium phosphate nanoparticles are discussed.