Engineered Aurotherapy for the Multimodal Treatment of Glioblastoma

Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is the most aggressive brain tumor, characterized by fatal prognosis and high rates of recurrence. Although there are various treatment strategies such as surgical resection, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy, these traditional approaches still have not improved the survival rates and prolongation. Therefore, there is a pressing requirement for developing novel technologies to combat GBM. Nanoparticle-based GBM therapy can be considered a promising approach to precisely treat tumors with minimal side effects. Among various nanoparticles, gold nanoparticle (AuNP) has been demonstrated to be effective in treating GBM because of its advantages such as easy functionalization due to self-assembled monolayers of thiols, surface plasmon resonance effect on its surface, and relatively low toxicity issues. By using nanoscale (5–100 nm) and facile functionalization with a targeting ligand, AuNP can overcome the obstacles caused by blood-brain barrier, which selectively inhibits AuNP penetration into the brain tumor mass. AuNPs delivered into brain tissue and targeted with GBM have been mostly explored for photothermal therapy and photodynamic therapy, but also investigated in the development of complex therapies including radiotherapy, chemotherapy, and immunotherapy using AuNP-based nanoplatforms. Therefore, the aim of this mini review is to summarize recent works on the AuNPs-based nanoplatforms for treating GBM with a multimodal approach.