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The last decade has seen dramatic progress in the principle, design, and fabrication of photonic nanomaterials with various optical properties and functionalities. Light-emitting and light-responsive nanomaterials, such as semiconductor quantum dots, plasmonic metal nanoparticles, organic carbon, and polymeric nanomaterials, offer promising approaches to low-cost and effective diagnostic, therapeutic, and theranostic applications. Reasonable endeavors have begun to translate some of the promising photonic nanomaterials to the clinic. Here, current research on the state-of-the-art and emerging photonic nanomaterials for diverse biomedical applications is reviewed, and the remaining challenges and future perspectives are discussed.

The recent progress in various biomaterials with unique physiological and pharmacological properties has expedited the development of translational medicines for the diagnosis, prognosis, and therapy of intractable diseases. Hyaluronic acid (HA) is one of such biomaterials that has attracted great attention due to its unique characteristics for biomedical applications. In this Perspective, we provide an overview of HA-based medicines in a variety of forms such as chemical and biological conjugates, nanoparticles, nanoparticle hybrid systems, hydrogels, and nanogels. We highlight the current-state-of-the-art strategies to design and optimize innovative HA-based medicines for their clinical translations. Finally, we discuss the challenges for technical hurdles and the future directions to expand the feasibility of HA-based translational medicines.

Noninvasive real-time biosensors to measure glucose levels in the body fluids have been widely investigated for continuous glucose monitoring of diabetic patients. However, they suffered from low sensitivity and reproducibility due to the instability of nanomaterials used for glucose biosensors. Here, we developed a hyaluronate−gold nanoparticle/glucose oxidase (HA− AuNP/GOx) complex and an ultralow-power application-specific integrated circuit chip for noninvasive and robust wireless patchtype glucose sensors. The HA−AuNP/GOx complex was prepared by the facile conjugation of thiolated HA to AuNPs and the following physical binding of GOx. The wireless glucose sensor exhibited slow water evaporation (0.11 μL/min), fast response (5 s), high sensitivity (12.37 μA•dL/mg•cm 2 ) and selectivity, a low detection limit (0.5 mg/dL), and highly stable enzymatic activity (∼14 days). We successfully demonstrated the strong correlation between glucose concentrations measured by a commercially available blood glucometer and the wireless patch-type glucose sensor. Taken together, we could confirm the feasibility of the wireless patch-type robust glucose sensor for noninvasive and continuous diabetic diagnosis.

Among various 2D nanomaterials, molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) exhibits unique visible photoluminescence with high absorption at the near‐infrared (NIR) range. Despite these optical properties, the efforts to use MoS2 nanomaterials for optical imaging and photothermal therapy are hampered by their instability and low intracellular delivery efficiency. Multifunctional MoS2 conjugated with hyaluronate (HA) for cancer theranosis is reported herein. HA facilitates the delivery of MoS2 to tumor cells by the HA‐receptor mediated endocytosis. In BALB/c nude mice inoculated with a colorectal cancer cell line of HCT116, HA‐MoS2 conjugates appear to be accumulated in the primary tumor at a content more than that in the liver and kidney. The disulfide bonding between MoS2 and thiolated HA seems to degrade in the cytoplasm, releasing MoS2 sheets in stacks and enhancing luminescence efficiency. The HA‐MoS2 conjugates are readily detected via photoacoustic imaging as well as upconversion and downconversion fluorescence imaging. With NIR light illumination, HA‐MoS2 conjugates enable highly effective photothermal tumor ablation. All these results confirm the promising potential of HA‐MoS2 conjugates for cancer theranosis.