Nanomaterials are showing great promise in their utility for cancer diagnostics and therapeutics. Many nanomaterial based drugs are already in clinical use and many others in different phases of clinical development. The progress of such therapies from early research stage through pre-clinical development requires a collaborative effort that leverages resources from government, industry, and academia. Working in concert with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the National Cancer Institute (NCI) established the Nanotechnology Characterization Laboratory (NCL) to provide critical preclinical characterization of nanoparticles used for cancer diagnostics and therapeutics. Nanoparticles submitted to the NCL are subjected to a standardized analytical cascade that characterizes nanoparticles’ physico-chemical attributes, their in vitro biological properties, and their in vivo safety and efficacy assessment . NCL has conducted preclinical assessment of various classes of material including polymers, dendrimers, quantum dots, nanoemulsions, liposomes, colloidal particles, fullerenes, and core-shell nanostructures (see Figure 1).
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