Organic Theranostic Agents: Design, Development, and Biomedical Applications

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Background

Theranostic systems integrate therapeutic aspects with the potential of concurrent diagnosis. They possess capabilities including targeting, imaging, and therapy in a single system. As such, theranostics are a source of great potential with regards to overseeing patient response to a particular therapy. Depending on the target of interest, the underlying concept involves the synthesis of molecular conjugates composed of masked drug agents, and disease-targeting ligands linked together through special, cleavable, chemical linkers. Ideally, active drug agents are masked with chemical linkers of a particular design, which allow their reconversion to the active form only under physiological conditions linked to the target disease type. These systems have shown immense potential in understanding uptake and drug activation mechanisms, and may significantly advance drug discovery efforts in future.  
Recently, much effort has been made to design and develop novel organic theranostic systems for certain disease types, which have shown strong therapeutic performance in preclinical models. Compared to conventional approaches, the current field offers advantages in improving the specific delivery of therapeutic agents, minimizing the associated side effects, and enhanced medical imaging. However, their clinical application needs further improvement in decreasing the cost of therapy, optimizing pharmacokinetics, and reducing side effects. Current theranostic systems have yet to reach wide clinical application and are mostly of academic interest. More research to improve our understanding of interwoven diagnosis and therapeutic agents to overcome the challenges for further translation to clinical practice is therefore needed.   
We welcome Original Research, Review, Mini Review and Perspective articles on themes including, but not limited to:
• Design and synthesis of novel organic theranostic systems • Studies on the characteristics of cleavable linkers for drug activation and imaging• Structure-activity relationship of novel theranostic systems • Advances in reporter molecules (Fluorescence, MRI, PET, …) in theranostic systems• Nanoformulation of novel organic theranostic systems• Potential applications in cancer therapy and antimicrobial formulations
Topic Editor Prof Peter Verwilst is a co-inventor listed on several patents in the field of theranostic agents. The other Topic Editors declare no competing interests.

Keywords: Organic theranostics, Chemical linkers, Imaging, Site-selective activation, Targeted drug delivery, Antimicrobials, Anticancer drugs.

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