Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.3/40424

Title

Ultra-low energy threshold for cancer photothermal therapy using transferrin-conjugated gold nanorods

Author(s)

Li, Jing-Liang;  Gu, Min;  Day, Daniel J.

Abstract

Gold nanoparticles have shown potential applications for cancer detection and localized photothermal therapy (PTT). Among the gold nanoparticles that have been studied, gold nanorods are of particular interest because of their tuneable near-infrared (NIR) absorption and the recent success in their size-controlled, large-scale synthesis. The strong two-photon photoluminescence (TPL) of gold nanorods render them good contrast agents for cancer cell imaging under two-photon excitation, which makes it more suitable to three-dimensional nonlinear optical imaging of biological samples. Despite the successful application of gold nanorods in PTT and in vitro cancer imaging, this technique still has a long way to go before it can be implemented clinically. [Introduction]

Publication type

Journal article

Research centre

Swinburne University of Technology. Faculty of Engineering and Industrial Sciences. Centre for Micro-Photonics

Source

Advanced Materials, Vol. 20, no. 20, pp. 3866-3871

Publication year

2008

Keyword(s)

Cancer;  Cancer cells;  Gold nanorods;  Near-infrared;  NIR;  Photothermal therapy;  Polarisation;  PTT;  Targeting;  Therapy;  TPL;  Transferring;  Two-photon photoluminescence

Publisher

Wiley

ISSN

0935-9648

Publisher URL

http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/adma.200800941

Copyright

Copyright © 2008 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

Additional information

The authors would like to thank Mr Peter Zijlstra for help with the TEM measurements and the Australia Research Council for financial support.

Peer reviewed