Abstract
Nanoparticles have demonstrated several advantages for biomedical applications, including for the development of multifunctional agents as innovative medicine. Silica nanoparticles hold a special position among the various types of functional nanoparticles, due to their unique structural and functional properties. The recent development of silica nanoparticles has led to a new trend in light-based nanomedicines. The application of light provides many advantages for in vivo imaging and therapy of certain diseases, including cancer. Mesoporous and non-porous silica nanoparticles have high potential for light-based nanomedicine. Each silica nanoparticle has a unique structure, which incorporates various functions to utilize optical properties. Such advantages enable silica nanoparticles to perform powerful and advanced optical imaging, from the in vivo level to the nano and micro levels, using not only visible light but also near-infrared light. Furthermore, applications such as photodynamic therapy, in which a lesion site is specifically irradiated with light to treat it, have also been advancing. Silica nanoparticles have shown the potential to play important roles in the integration of light-based diagnostics and therapeutics, termed “photo-theranostics”. Here, we review the recent development and progress of non-porous silica nanoparticles toward cancer “photo-theranostics”.
Highlights
In biomedical imaging in particular, nanoparticles have been applied to various imaging modalities, including optical imaging, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), X-ray computed tomography (CT), and radiation imaging
Silica nanoparticles have a fast hydrolytic rate veloped an effective method for synthesizing monodispersed silica particles, which led to and dissolve, over time, into water-soluble silicic acid, which is excreted in urine [64,65]
The direct method was applied to inorganosilica nanoparticles with rhodamine B, in order to compare the incorporation efficiency of fluorescence molecules of organosilica nanoparticles, but no fluorescence was observed from the inorganic nanoparticles prepared from tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS)
Summary
Nanomedicine has made great strides as an interdisciplinary research field that combines various scientific fields, such as nanotechnology, organic chemistry, materials science, quantum science, molecular biology, and biotechnology, for biomedical applications [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23]. Applications of nanoparticles in the biomedical field have various advantages, such as numerical superiority, multifunctionality, additive/multiplier effects, and nano-sized effect, as compared with the small molecules used as therapeutics and imaging contrast agents. Various functional nanoparticles, such as liposomes, dendrimers, gold nanoparticles, iron oxide, and silica nanoparticles, have been developed and investigated in the biomedical field [24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31]. We discuss the recent development and progress of non-porous silica nanoparticles towards cancer “photo-theranostics”
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