Nanoplasmonics Enabling Cancer Diagnostics and Therapy

SIMPLE SUMMARY: Recent advances in the state of the art for early cancer detection and therapy have led to a paradigm shift in the way the disease is detected and treated. In particular, treatments have become much more targeted and localized to minimize systemic body-wide side effects common in traditional treatment methods such as chemotherapy. At the forefront of this revolution is the utilization of plasmonic gold nanoparticles, which have gained increasing attention as a highly effective nanoplatform ranging from drug delivery to plasmonics-enhanced treatments such as photothermal therapy. ABSTRACT: In this paper, we highlight several advances our laboratory has developed in the pursuit of cancer diagnostics and therapeutics by integrating plasmonics, photonics, and nanotechnology. We discuss the development and applications of plasmonics-active gold nanostar (GNS), a uniquely shaped nanoparticle with numerous branches that serve to greatly amplify the thermal generation at resonant wavelengths. GNS has also been successfully used in tumor imaging contexts from two-photon fluorescence to surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) sensing and imaging. Finally, GNS has been coupled with immunotherapy applications to serve as an effective adjuvant to immune checkpoint inhibitors. This combination of GNS and immunotherapy, the so called synergistic immuno photo nanotherapy (SYMPHONY), has been shown to be effective at controlling long-lasting cancer immunity and metastatic tumors.