Strategies to Improve Cancer Photothermal Therapy Mediated by Nanomaterials

• Autor(a) principal: Diogo, Duarte Miguel de Melo
• Data de Publicação: 2017
• Outros Autores: Silva, Cleide Isabel Pais, Dias, Diana Rodrigues, Moreira, André, Correia, Ilídio Joaquim Sobreira
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: spa
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.6/4697
• topic: Cancer treatment; Hyperthermia; Inorganic nanostructures; Light‐responsive nanomaterials; Photothermal therapy

The deployment of hyperthermia‐based treatments for cancer therapy has captured the attention of different researchers worldwide. In particular, the application of light‐responsive nanomaterials to mediate hyperthermia has revealed promising results in several pre‐clinical assays. Unlike conventional therapies, these nanostructures can display a preferential tumor accumulation and thus mediate, upon irradiation with near‐infrared light, a selective hyperthermic effect with temporal resolution. Different types of nanomaterials such as those based on gold, carbon, copper, molybdenum, tungsten, iron, palladium and conjugated polymers have been used for this photothermal modality. This progress report summarizes the different strategies that have been applied so far for increasing the efficacy of the photothermal therapeutic effect mediated by nanomaterials, namely those that improve the accumulation of nanomaterials in tumors (e.g. by changing the corona composition or through the functionalization with targeting ligands), increase nanomaterials' intrinsic capacity to generate photoinduced heat (e.g. by synthesizing new nanomaterials or assembling nanostructures) or by optimizing the parameters related to the laser light used in the irradiation process (e.g. by modulating the radiation wavelength). Overall, the development of new strategies or the optimization and combination of the existing ones will surely give a major contribution for the application of nanomaterials in cancer PTT.