Tumor photothermolysis: using carbon nanomaterials for cancer therapy

Abstract

Carbon nanomaterials have unique physicochemical properties based solely on their small size, which makes them ideal for nano-oncology. While there have been tremendous advances in the current treatment of high-risk cancers, conventional treatment still causes harm to the surrounding healthy tissue. Carbon nanomaterials such as carbon nanotubes, carbon nanohorns, and graphenes have been increasingly used in the field of cancer photothermal therapy. Through surface functionalization, carbon nanomaterials can be specifically targeted to the tumorous tissue allowing for an increase in therapeutic potential. The unique photo-electron transfer features of carbon nanomaterials coupled with functional moieties, is proving useful for their use in the photothermolysis of cancer cells.Keywords: cancer; carbon nanohorn; carbon nanotube; graphene; photothermal therapy Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content. Please, subscribe or login to access all content.

One-Step Preparation of a Water-Soluble Carbon Nanohorn/Phthalocyanine Hybrid for Dual-Modality Photothermal and Photodynamic Therapy

“…In addition, an attempt was made to perform the cell viability experiment of pristine SWNHs with irradiation alone, but was restricted, because of insolubility of the SWNHs without any functionality. It should be noted that, although its lack of direct evidence of the phototherapy effect contributed by SWNHs, based on the previous studies on PTT of SWNHs, 14,19,41,42 we can infer that SWNHs indeed contribute to the phototherapy effect through photothermal conversion.…”

“…However, previous reports illustrated that SWNHs have high photothermal conversion efficiency and could act as an ideal PTT agent. 14,19,41,42 With all these results in hand, we can infer that not only do SWNHs contribute to the PTT effect, TSCuPc may also contribute to that when it coats on the surface of SWNHs upon exposure to a 650-nm laser. It is worth mentioning that the SWNHs−TSCuPc nanohybrid is heated to over 45 °C within 5 min, which is supposed for cancer cell killing.…”

Investigation of Thermally Induced Cellular Ablation and Heat Response Triggered by Planar MoS2-Based Nanocomposite

“…1−3 Compared with the conventional modalities, PTT exhibits great advantages owing to its minimal invasiveness, higher precision, spatial-temporal selectivity, and greater efficacy against cancer resistance. 4 In line with such promising capabilities in tumor treatment, so far, numerous nanoscale materials including gold (Au) nanostructures, 5,6 CuS nanocrystals, 7−9 carbon-based nanotubes, and graphene derivatives 10,11 have been extensively exploited as functional platforms for photothermal treatment of a variety of cancers in vitro and in vivo.…”