The golden age: gold nanoparticles for biomedicine

By E. Dreaden, Alaaldin M. Alkilany, Xiaohua Huang, C. Murphy, M. El-Sayed. Chemical Society Reviews, 2011

2,836 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Gold nanoparticles have been used in biomedical applications since their first colloidal syntheses more than three centuries ago. However, over the past two decades, their beautiful colors and unique electronic properties have also attracted tremendous attention due to their historical applications in art and ancient medicine and current applications in enhanced optoelectronics and photovoltaics. In spite of their modest alchemical beginnings, gold nanoparticles exhibit physical properties that are truly different from both small molecules and bulk materials, as well as from other nanoscale particles. Their unique combination of properties is just beginning to be fully realized in range of medical diagnostic and therapeutic applications. This critical review will provide insights into the design, synthesis, functionalization, and applications of these artificial molecules in biomedicine and discuss their tailored interactions with biological systems to achieve improved patient health. Further, we provide a survey of the rapidly expanding body of literature on this topic and argue that gold nanotechnology-enabled biomedicine is not simply an act of ‘gilding the (nanomedicinal) lily’, but that a new ‘Golden Age’ of biomedical nanotechnology is truly upon us. Moving forward, the most challenging nanoscience ahead of us will be to find new chemical and physical methods of functionalizing gold nanoparticles with compounds that can promote efficient binding, clearance, and biocompatibility and to assess their safety to other biological systems and their long-term term effects on human health and reproduction (472 references).

Subfields: Biomaterials, Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials, Materials Chemistry

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/381710910b9e4df3d97287a75482d6b2a9d731be

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Citations in the corpus

Reliable computational design of biological-inorganic materials to the large nanometer scale using Interface-FF (2017, background): “Examples include decorated nanoparticles and nanofillers [7,8], interfaces for charge generation in solar cells [9,10], chemical reactions in batteries [11,12], fuel cells [13], DNA nanotechnology and therapeutics [14,15] and functional nanocomposites [16–18].”
Nanoparticle classification, physicochemical properties, characterization, and applications: a comprehensive review for biologists (2022, neutral): “In present days, the size-, shape-, and facet-controlled synthesis of metal NPs is important for creating cutting-edge materials [43].”
A review on nanoparticles: characteristics, synthesis, applications, and challenges (2023, background): “The facet, size, and shape-controlled synthesis of metal NPs are essential in present-day cutting-edge materials (Dreaden et al., 2012; Khan et al., 2019).”
Bimetallic Nanoparticles: Enhanced Magnetic and Optical Properties for Emerging Biological Applications (2018, positive): “Gold nanoparticles of various shapes and sizes have been reported for bioimaging applications due to their low toxicity and biocompatibility [143,144].”