Chapter 5: Imaging with Bacteriophage-derived Probes

Filamentous bacteriophages (phages) are versatile particles useful as a platform for the development and application of molecularly targeted in vivo imaging agents. They can not only be genetically modified for the generation of diverse phage display libraries suitable for selection of specifically targeted antibodies, peptides, and proteins; they can also be chemically modified for use in the field of molecular imaging, nanomedicine, nanodevices, biosensors, and gene transfer. Phages are among the most promising new type of biological nanomaterial in that they represent ideal monodisperse nanoparticles that are able to self-assemble, are biodegradable, and non-pathogenic.