Recent Progress in Macromolecule‐Anchored Hybrid Gold Nanomaterials for Biomedical Applications

Abstract

Gold nanoparticles (AuNPs), with elegant thermal, optical, or chemical properties due to quantum size effects, may serve as unique species for therapeutic or diagnostic applications. It is worth mentioning that their small size also results in high surface activity, leading to significantly impaired stability, which greatly hinders their biomedical utilizations. To overcome this problem, various types of macromolecular materials are utilized to anchor AuNPs so as to achieve advanced synergistic effect by dispersing, protecting, and stabilizing the AuNPs in polymeric-Au hybrid self-assemblies. In this review, the most recent development of polymer-AuNP hybrid systems, including AuNPs@polymeric nanoparticles, AuNPs@polymeric micelle, AuNPs@polymeric film, and AuNPs@polymeric hydrogel are discussed with respect to their different synthetic strategies. These sophisticated materials with diverse functions, oriented toward biomedical applications, are further summarized into several active domains in the areas of drug delivery, gene delivery, photothermal therapy, antibacterials, bioimaging, etc. Finally, the possible approaches for future design of multifunctional polymer-AuNP hybrids by combining hybrid chemistry with biological interface science are proposed.

Potent‐By‐Design: Amino Acids Mimicking Porous Nanotherapeutics with Intrinsic Anticancer Targeting Properties

“…Since the physicochemical properties of NPs are known to be key determinants of NPs induced biological outcomes, [ 31,32 ] we ask whether if changing the particle size of Nano‐pPAAM would potentially alter its anticancer efficacy. To investigate the effects of particle size, Nano‐pPAAM with different core particle sizes (i.e., 80, 170, and 260 nm) was synthesized and their anticancer activities was compared to the 30 nm variant.…”

The Perspectives of Using Unimolecular Micelles in Nanodrug Formulation

“…As a typical example, gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) are widely utilized as computed tomography (CT) imaging contrast agents, but are greatly hindered by undesired instability [14,15]. Interestingly, rationally designed unimolecular micelle with reductive groups might help to achieve the in situ synthesis of AuNPs without the use of toxic reducing chemicals and greatly improve AuNP stability in blood circulation for increasing S/N ratios.…”

Plasmonically Modulated Gold Nanostructures for Photothermal Ablation of Bacteria

“…[38,39] The diversified NIR-active gold nanostructures have been facilely prepared to exhibit low biological toxicity, [40,41] together with good targeting ability after functionalized with special species. [42,43] As indicated, the combination of NIR irradiation and functionalized gold nanostructures is an exciting approach for thermally killing bacteria at the infected area. [44][45][46][47][48][49][50] To this end, this paper will overview the synthesis and functionalization of plasmonic gold nanostructures and their recent photothermal applications for combating against infections with MDR bacteria (Figure 2).…”