Abstract
Current cancer treatment options, including surgery, chemotherapy and radiation therapy, often cause damage to healthy tissue and reduce a patient's quality of life with well-known side effects, such as pain, infection and nerve damage. Recent research has shown that gold nanoparticles used as photothermal agents in photothermal therapy may pose as an alternative to traditional treatments. This great potential is due to their ability to selectively accumulate in cancerous tissue, efficiently absorb near-infrared light, and kill cancerous tissue without harming surrounding cells. Gold nanoparticles show promise in increasing treatment efficacy and reducing the side effects associated with cancer therapy. While recent studies show the potential of gold nanoparticles, the existing literature is limited in drawing comparisons between studies and practical use for photothermal therapy. This paper reviews notable studies on four common gold nanoparticles used in the therapeutic treatment of cancer: gold nanocages, gold nanospheres, gold nanorods, and gold nanoshells. By comparing key characteristics of the particles’, including their synthesis, toxicity, absorption spectrum, and selective photothermal lethality, gold nanospheres can be recommended for use in photothermal therapy. Although forms of each gold nanoparticle were found to have a low toxicity, gold nanospheres can be rapidly synthesized and appear to exceed in selective photothermal lethality and immature tumour accumulation. Due to these advantages in using gold nanospheres for photothermal therapy, cancer could be treated more effectively and improve patient prognosis.
Highlights
Cancer is the leading cause of death in Canada with 1 in 4 cases being fatal [1]
Cancer’s mortality rate is decreasing due to advancements in the medical field, but remains high globally [4]. This is largely caused by the damage cancer causes to healthy tissue and the large strain placed on the body during conventional treatment [5]
A promising method to achieve hyperthermia is using photothermal agent (PTA) that accumulate selectively in tumour tissue and cause heating in a localized area when exposed to electromagnetic radiation of a certain frequency [16, 22]
Summary
Cancer is the leading cause of death in Canada with 1 in 4 cases being fatal [1]. In 2020, 225,800 people in Canada are expected to be diagnosed with cancer [2]. A promising method to achieve hyperthermia is using PTAs that accumulate selectively in tumour tissue and cause heating in a localized area when exposed to electromagnetic radiation of a certain frequency [16, 22] This process is known as photothermal therapy (PTT) [17, 41]. Chen and colleagues [29] tested the selective destruction of tumourous tissue using AuNCs by injecting 10 mice with cancer cells (U87wtEGFR) subcutaneously in their right and left ear flanks [29]. These results indicate that while in previous studies, AuNSs showed low toxicity in cell cultures, they can cause lethal effects in mammals at certain diameters and high enough doses [40] This is an important factor for further research to ensure the safety of using AuNSs in PTT. The solution was centrifuged and a PBS buffer (pH of 7.4) was used to redisperse resulting pellets of anti-EGFR antibodies and AuNSs [35]
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