Integrated Photodynamic Raman Theranostics for Cancer Diagnosis, Treatment, and Post-Treatment Molecular Monitoring

TL;DR

This paper introduces a nanoparticle-free theranostic platform combining Raman spectroscopy and photodynamic therapy for real-time cancer diagnosis, treatment, and monitoring, addressing clinical translation challenges of existing methods.

Contribution

It presents a novel integrated platform that enables simultaneous cancer diagnosis, therapy, and post-treatment monitoring without nanoparticles, overcoming toxicity and complexity issues.

Findings

Successful in vivo tumor diagnosis and treatment

Real-time post-treatment molecular monitoring achieved

Compatible with clinical settings for personalized cancer care

Abstract

Theranostics, the combination of diagnosis and therapy, has long held promise as a means to achieving personalised precision cancer treatments. However, despite its potential, theranostics has yet to realise significant clinical translation, largely due the complexity and overriding toxicity concerns of existing theranostic nanoparticle strategies. Here, we present an alternative nanoparticle-free theranostic approach based on simultaneous Raman spectroscopy and photodynamic therapy (PDT) in an integrated clinical platform for cancer theranostics. We detail the compatibility of Raman spectroscopy and PDT for cancer theranostics, whereby Raman spectroscopic diagnosis can be performed on PDT photosensitiser-positive cells and tissues without inadvertent photosensitiser activation/photobleaching or impaired diagnostic capacity. We further demonstrate that our theranostic platform enables in vivo tumour diagnosis, treatment, and post-treatment molecular monitoring in real-time. This system thus achieves effective theranostic performance, providing a promising new avenue towards the clinical realisation of theranostics.