Research Progress in Cancer Treatment of Aptamer Functionalized Gold Nanorods

Gold nanorods (GNRs) have attracted great attention in various biomedical applications such as drug delivery, photothermal therapy, photodynamic therapy, and photoacoustic imaging because of their larger specific surface area, easy synthesis, surface modification, stability, and strong absorption and scattering in NIR region. Aptamers are oligonucleotide sequences with a length of about 20-80 bases which have abilities to bind to specific target molecules, enabling specific recognition and binding to cancer cells or their membrane proteins. Aptamer could act as ligands and be modified onto GNRs, aptamer. functionalized GNRs can actively target and identify cancer cells, showing a good application prospect in the field of cancer therapy. Herein, we overview the recent progress in the designs and applications of aptamer. targeted GNRs for cancer therapy. GNRs can be used as photothermal agents, as well as nanocarriers of drugs, photosensitizers, and small interfering RNA to achieve cancer combination therapies. According to the differences in the mechanism of cancer therapy, the applications of aptamer-functionalized GNRs nanosystems for cancer therapy are reviewed, which are divided into four aspects: photothermal therapy, photodynamic therapy, chemotherapy, and combination therapy. Combination therapy includes photo-thermal therapy/chemotherapy, photothermal therapy/photodynamic therapy, photothermal therapy/gene therapy, photothermal therapy/chemotherapy/gene therapy, and photothermal therapy/chemotherapy/photodynamic therapy. Finally, we elaborate on the current challenge and future perspectives of aptamer. functionalized GNRs for cancer therapy.