Click chemistry-driven tumor theranostics: recent advances, challenges, and future perspectives

Area of Science:

• Oncology
• Chemical Biology
• Biomedical Engineering

Background:

• Tumor theranostics combines diagnosis and therapy to enhance cancer treatment efficacy and reduce toxicity.
• Click chemistry offers high efficiency, selectivity, and biocompatibility, making it ideal for developing theranostic systems.

Purpose of the Study:

• To systematically review recent advancements in click chemistry-based tumor theranostic systems.
• To discuss the application of click chemistry in tumor diagnosis, therapy, and integrated theranostics.
• To identify current challenges and future directions in the field.

Main Methods:

• Overview of core click reactions and their biomedical applications.
• Focus on click chemistry applications in molecular imaging, circulating tumor cell detection, chemotherapy, phototherapy, immunotherapy, and gene therapy.
• Discussion of multimodal imaging-guided combinatorial therapy.

Main Results:

• Click chemistry facilitates the construction of versatile theranostic systems for various cancer applications.
• It enables precise molecular imaging, targeted drug delivery, and combination therapies.
• The review critically examines challenges like catalyst biocompatibility and in vivo efficiency.

Conclusions:

• Click chemistry is a powerful tool for developing sophisticated tumor theranostic systems.
• Future directions include stimuli-responsive reactions, AI-assisted design, and personalized medicine.
• Click chemistry offers spatiotemporal control, modularity, and bioorthogonal precision crucial for clinical translation.