ABSTRACT
Gold nanoparticles (Au NPs) and the myriad of concurrent nanotechnologies under development have engendered a widespread interest in the development of a new generation of nanobiotechnological devices for medical diagnostics and therapy. ey are very promising nanostructures for use in oncology as diagnostic optical probes (Boppart et al. 2005, El-Sayed et al. 2005, Huang et al. 2006a, Huang et al. 2007), drug delivery vectors (Paciotti et al. 2004, Paciotti et al. 2006), and photothermal therapy agents (El-Sayed et al. 2006, Huang et al. 2006a,b). ey are optically active in multiple imaging domains including uorescence, absorption, scattering, and Raman spectroscopy. ey exhibit intensely enhanced absorption cross sections that are ve to six orders of magnitude larger than those of conventional photo-absorbing dyes (Jain et al. 2006) due to the coupling of the electromagnetic wave to the surface plasmon resonance (SPR). is absorbed light energy is able to be nonradiatively converted to heat via a series of photophysical processes (Link et al. 2000). In biologic systems, the dissipation of heat to the surrounding environment can initiate the thermal destruction of the surrounding cells and tissues. Au NPs can be selectively targeted to intracellular targets such as the nucleus, cell cytoplasm, or cell membrane (El-Sayed et al. 2005) and thus enables site selective photothermolysis.
