Insights into Theranostic Properties of Titanium Dioxide for Nanomedicine

Abstract

Highlights

• Multifunctional TiO₂ nanostructures hold promise for advancing a wide range of biomedical applications due to a feasible integration of distinct theranostic features.

• Fabrication and post-fabrication strategies implemented to generate multifunctional TiO₂ nanostructures for a broad range of biomedical applications are briefly outlined. The opportunities and challenges of TiO₂ nanomaterials are highlighted in order to open the possibility of clinical translation.

Titanium dioxide (TiO₂) nanostructures exhibit a broad range of theranostic properties that make them attractive for biomedical applications. TiO₂ nanostructures promise to improve current theranostic strategies by leveraging the enhanced quantum confinement, thermal conversion, specific surface area, and surface activity. This review highlights certain important aspects of fabrication strategies, which are employed to generate multifunctional TiO₂ nanostructures, while outlining post-fabrication techniques with an emphasis on their suitability for nanomedicine. The biodistribution, toxicity, biocompatibility, cellular adhesion, and endocytosis of these nanostructures, when exposed to biological microenvironments, are examined in regard to their geometry, size, and surface chemistry. The final section focuses on recent biomedical applications of TiO₂ nanostructures, specifically evaluating therapeutic delivery, photodynamic and sonodynamic therapy, bioimaging, biosensing, tissue regeneration, as well as chronic wound healing.