Noble Metal Nanoparticle Platform
by Chen, Jingyi
Noble metal nanoparticles are an emerging platform for cancer diagnosis and therapy, in particular gold-based nanoparticles. Since the 1950s, radioactive gold colloids have been used to treat malignancies in humans. Tunable optical properties and facile surface modifications allow rational design of gold-based nanoparticle platforms for a variety of biomedical applications associated with oncology research. Over the last decade, gold-based nanoparticles have been widely explored as nanocarriers for drug delivery, imaging agents for cancer diagnosis, and therapeutic agents for cancer treatment. This chapter summarizes the basic properties of gold-based nanoparticles and highlights their recent advances as multifunctional platforms in cancer theranostics. Despite some biological challenges, gold-based nanoparticle platforms provide many new opportunities to ultimately achieve theranostics for cancer.