Smart materials on the way to theranostic nanorobots: Molecular machines and nanomotors,advanced biosensors,and intelligent vehicles for drug delivery

BackgroundTheranostics, a fusion of two key parts of modern medicine - diagnostics and therapy of the organism's disorders, promises to bring the efficacy of medical treatment to a fundamentally new level and to become the basis of personalized medicine. Extrapolating today's progress in the field of smart materials to the long-run prospect, we can imagine future intelligent agents capable of performing complex analysis of different physiological factors inside the living organism and implementing a built-in program thereby triggering a series of therapeutic actions. These agents, by analogy with their macroscopic counterparts, can be called nanorobots. It is quite obscure what these devices are going to look like but they will be more or less based on today's achievements in nanobiotechnology.Scope of ReviewThe present Review is an attempt to systematize highly diverse nanomaterials, which may potentially serve as modules for theranostic nanorobotics, e.g., nanomotors, sensing units, and payload carriers.Major ConclusionsBiocomputing-based sensing, externally actuated or chemically “fueled” autonomous movement, swarm inter-agent communication behavior are just a few inspiring examples that nanobiotechnology can offer today for construction of truly intelligent drug delivery systems.General SignificanceThe progress of smart nanomaterials toward fully autonomous drug delivery nanorobots is an exciting prospect for disease treatment. Synergistic combination of the available approaches and their further development may produce intelligent drugs of unmatched functionality.