Nanotechnology-assisted lung cancer diagnosis: biomarkers and imaging

Lung cancer is one of the most deadly types of cancer, worldwide. It is essential to diagnose lung cancer in the early stage to accelerate the therapeutic process. The progress in nanotechnology-assisted therapies has revolutionized early diagnosis of lung cancer by developing non-invasive, selective, and highly sensitive nanostructures. Nanoparticles (NPs) have been widely used to improve the diagnosis and treatment of lung tumors due to their small size relative to human cells. The NPs can skip the barriers and target the proteins associated with tumor cells through either intracellular or extracellular action. Moreover, by using nanosensors, it is possible to detect specific biomarkers related to lung cancer in the early stages. This review is aimed at summarizing, classifying, and interpreting outcomes of reports on the application of NPs in detecting lung cancer. The survey revealed that NPs are used in three pathways to detect cancer, including detection of biomarkers, detection of cancer cells, and in vivo tumor imaging. Once the significance or limitation of each approach in the diagnosis of lung cancer is examined, their relative relevance is inferred.