Nanomedicine

As an important and growing branch of photomedicine, photodynamic therapy (PDT) is being increasingly employed in clinical applications particularly for cancer treatment. Integrating nanotechnology with PDT has made a significant contribution in advancing the frontier of photomedicine. Among nanoparticles, gold nanoparticles make them excellent candidate for drug delivery, cancer monitoring, and treatment because of biocompatibility, chemical inertness, ease of transport in cellular compartments, high affinity to cancer cells and localized surface Plasmon resonance. Thus, PDT drugs (photosensitizers) conjugated gold nanoparticles can selectively destroy cancer cells and promote treatment efficiency due to localized enhanced reactive oxygen species.

 

Enhanced generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) by gold nanoparticles depends on the size of the nanoparticles and their localized surface Plasmon resonances. However, overall cellular PDT efficacy counts not only ROS generation but also size dependent cellular uptake.