Nanotechnology involves creation and utilization of materials, devices or systems on the nanometer scale. The field of nanotechnology is currently undergoing explosive development on many fronts. The technology is expected to generate innovations and play a critical role in drug delivery and imaging. There has been tremendous progress made in the use of polymer and lipid based nanoparticles (NPs) for drug delivery and imaging. Recently, more attention has been given to incorporating inorganic NPs such as gold and magnetic NPs with both imaging and therapeutic capabilities into polymer and lipid based NPs for improved therapy and imaging in cancer treatment. In this review article, the recent progress in the development of multiplex polymer, lipid, and inorganic NPs towards optimizing techniques for drug delivery and multimodal imaging will be discussed along with the relevant patents.