The Role of Gold Nanoparticles in Radiotherapy

Introduction: Cancer nanotechnology has become a prime field of investigations for the scientists nowadays. Application of tumor-specific nanoparticles in radiation therapy has aimed to improve the radiation therapy outcomes by inducing more toxicity for tumors and less for normal tissues. Gold nanoparticles have been explored for tumor targeting, tumor imaging, and photo-thermal therapy of cancer due to their unique physicochemical and optical characteristics. There are several nanocarriers systems used for effective cancer therapeutics and gold nanoparticles (GNPs) have become promising vehicles for the delivery of anticancer drugs into their targets. In this review, the studies on GNP and its applications in treating cancers were reviewed and the advantages and controversies were discussed, it examined whether the use of these gold nanoparticles is harmless to humans, whether there are short-term and long-term complications and whether this is a better way to treat cancer or not. Furthermore, Various therapeutic applications of the GNPs for cancer treatment were illustrated.methods: This systematic review is about the effect of gold nanoparticles on cancer treatment. The Keywords were searched in PubMed, Google Scholar and Scopus according by MeSH keywords. Finally articles from 2014 to 2018 were evaluated. Results: Many studies have shown that the radiotherapy in association with GNPs killed significantly more cancer cells compared to those without GNP. Photothermal therapy with gold nanoparticles showed cancer cell destruction and in vivo effects ranging from tumor volume regression to complete remission. Nanoparticles can enhance the dose deposition phenomenon in GNP loaded tumors. But there are controversial results about the impact of photon energy and GNP size in recently published articles. Also, more biological experiments on cell lines and animal models are required to clarify the observed differences in dose enhancement effect concerning the magnitude of enhancement effect and impact of cell type in GNP-based radiation therapy.Conclusion: Gold nanoparticles are suited well for cancer therapeutics due to their higher biocompatibility and lesser toxicity. They can be utilized actively or passively both for the targeting of tumor cells, and effectively eliminates cancer cells without the need for high-power x-ray or multi-step therapies.

کلیدواژه ها:

Gold nanoparticles ، Cancer ، Radiation ، Treatment