Table 2.

Application of gold nanomaterials in cancer detection and therapy

Nanosystem	Target molecule/drug	Cell line/animals	Application	Result	References
Au@Ag core–shell nanoprobe	FA	MGC-803 cells	Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) activity	Nanoprobes exhibit excellent detection ability of living cancer cells	Chang et al. (2019b)
Gold nanostar	Matrix metallopeptidase 2, IR-780 iodide	A549 cells	NIR imaging, PA imaging, PDT	Suppressed the growth of tumor, and the tumor volume decreased by 93%	Xia et al. (2019)
AuNPs	Chlorotoxin (CTX), radionuclide 131I	BALB/c female nude mice	SPECT/computed tomography (CT) imaging, radionuclide therapy	Due to CTX, the developed nanoprobe can cross the Blood–Brain Barrier (BBB) and specifically target glioma cells in a rat intracranial glioma model	Zhao et al. (2019b)
Au@Cu3 1,3,5-benzenetricarboxylate NPs	Aptamer, DOX	A549, BEAS-2B and HeLa cells	SERS imaging, chemo, and PT therapy	Nanosystem exhibited high drug loading capacity (57%). Effective in cell tracking and in vivo synergistic therapy	He et al. (2019)
Magnetic AuNPs	DOX	MCF7 cells and Female Swiss mice	Contrast agent for MRI, chemo and PT therapy	Iron core allows the magnetic targeting of particles to tumor sites. Nanocomposite have the ability to visualize and kill tumor cells with high precision	Elbialy et al. (2019)
AuNPs	PPP-CD-g-PEG	U87 and Vero cells	Fluorescence cell imaging and radiotherapy	Radiosensitivity efficiently increases with the use of this conjugate	Barlas et al. (2019)
AuNPs/Gold sulphide (AuS) NPs	C225 (Cetuximab monoclonal antibody)	MDA MB 231 and A549 cells	PTT	PTT can reduce the cell survival to less than 20%	Ramezanzadeh et al. (2018)
AuNPs	–	HSC-3 cells	–	Combination of 4 Gy irradiation with AuNPs significantly increases the apoptotic cells	Teraoka et al. (2018)

PPP-CD-g-PEG poly(p-phenylene-co-cyclodextrin-g-poly(ethylene glycol)