Use of particulate material for the formulation of diagnostic products

Diagnosis is the medical act that identifies the signs and the symptoms of an illness. It is an unavoidable step before the prescription of any medical treatment. Over the last decades, the increasing desire of more precise diagnosis, led to the emergence of new tools: the diagnostic products.
These products are used to identify and monitor the cause of disorders to facilitate and specify the diagnosis, and thus, allow an adaptation of the medical treatment. Diagnostic products can be imaging probes, labels for immunoassays, reagents, contrast agents, or radiopharmaceutical products. As a part of diagnostic products, companion diagnostics are specific of a treatment and are mostly used in cancer therapies. They help determining if the patient would profit from a medication, depending on his genotype and possible genetic mutations. Phenotyping cocktails are diagnostic products that are used in phenotyping to obtain additional information, considering the effect of external environmental factors which can also influence the response to a treatment.
Diagnostic products permit the personalization of medicine, by adapting the medications to the patient, optimize the treatment, and reduce potential side effects. Despite their great benefit, only a few diagnostic products are developed, limiting the possibility to improve diagnosis and therapeutics. In this manuscript, we present 2 diagnostic products formulated with nanoparticulate and microparticulate material. The first formulation consists in “polymersomes containing quantum dots (QDs) for cellular imaging”. These polymeric vesicles have the capacity to encapsulate highly fluorescent probes like QDs to prevent the toxic effect of the latter without altering their imaging properties. The second diagnostic product is the “CombiCap, a novel drug formulation for the Basel phenotyping cocktail”. This unique formulation is equivalent to the 6 dosage forms composing the Basel cocktail and presents many advantages that facilitate its diagnostic use.
Both formulated products are intended for diagnostic purposes. They are safe, reliable, specific, customizable, easy to formulate and easy to use. They bring precise information on the health status of the patient in order to give a better diagnosis, to adapt the medical treatment and to monitor the therapeutic response. The interest for individualized therapies is growing, and therefore, the development of new diagnostic products needs to increase. In the future, the personalization of diagnosis and therapeutics will be a common medical practice.