Photothermal Cancer Therapy and Imaging Based on Gold Nanorods

Abstract

Gold nanorods (GNRs), which strongly absorb near-infrared (NIR) light, have shown great potential in fields of biomedical application. These include photothermal therapy, molecular imaging, biosensing, and gene delivery, especially for the treatment of diseased tissues such as cancer. These biomedical applications of GNRs arise from their various useful properties; photothermal (nanoheater) properties, efficient large scale synthesis, easy functionalization, and colloidal stability. In addition, GNRs do not decompose and have an enhanced scattering signal and tunable longitudinal plasmon absorption which allow them to be used as a stable contrast agent. Therefore, GNRs are also promising theranostic agents, combining both tumor diagnosis and treatment. In this review, we discuss the recent progress of in vitro and in vivo explorations of the diagnostic and therapeutic applications of GNRs as a component of cancer therapy.

Photoacoustic effect measurement in aqueous suspensions of gold nanorods caused by low-frequency and low-power near-infrared pulsing laser irradiation

“…The effectiveness of the method was determined by measuring changes in cell viability after laser irradiation of cells in the presence of GNRs. In accordance with other results in comparable experiments [12][13][14], ours indicated that continuous laser irradiation in the presence of the particles induced a significant decrease in cell viability, while no decrease in cell viability was observed with laser irradiation or incubation with GNRs alone [15].…”

Thermal stability of mesoporous silica-coated gold nanorods with different aspect ratios

“…The plasmonic properties of gold nanorods allow them to be used in photothermal therapy [1,2], imaging techniques [3,4], theranostics [5,6], sensing applications [7][8][9][10] and optical memories [11,12].…”

Applications of gold nanorods in biomedical imaging and related fields

“…The surface modification methods of GNRs include ligand exchange, layer-by-layer (LBL) and surface coating [14,15]. In ligand exchange method, some biological molecules, such as phosphatidylcholine (PC) [16], lipids [17] and thiol compounds, such as alkanethiol [18], thiol-terminated poly (ethylene glycol) (PEG-SH) [19], thiolated chitosan [20], were used to replace CTAB completely or at least partially.…”