Table 4.

Quantum dots application in cancer detection and therapy

Nanosystem	Target moleculed	Cell line/animals	Application	Result	References
Silica NPs-carbon dots	FA	HeLa, MCF7, A549 and L929 cells	Fluorescence image-guided drug carrier	Nanohybrid exhibits superior performance for imaging-guided drug delivery to FR overexpressing HeLa cells	Zhao et al. (2019c)
GQDs	Herceptin, DOX	SK-BR-3 and MDA-MB-231 cells	Antitumor activity and intracellular trafficking	Cellular uptake and antitumor activity was enhanced in HER2 overexpressing cells	Ko et al. (2019)
QDs/IONPs	Biotinylation site (BS), dockerin domain	MCF-7, MDA-MB-231, SKBR3 cells	Early cancer detection, hyperthermia	Hybrid peptide detects the HER2/neu-positive breast cancer cells due to QDs-fluorescence and destroyed as a result of the IONPs-mediated hyperthermia	Chang et al. (2019a)
AgGa xIn(1- x)S2 (AGIS) QDs	Low-density lipoprotein (LDL)	NCM-460 cells	Photoluminescence probe 3D imaging of cancer stem cells	Nanoprobe shows receptor-mediated internalization. Utilized in 3D imaging of cancer cells	Song et al. (2019)
GQDs	FA	SKOV3, MDA-MB-231, MCF7 cells	Intracellular trafficking	Nanoconjugate exhibits good cancer targeting activity without cytotoxicity	Zhang et al. (2019)
Nitrogen-doped carbon dots (N-CD)	DOX	HeLa cells	Fluorescence imaging	N-CDs exhibited high quality single-and two-photon fluorescence in high depth (18 µm), enabling the N-CDs based real-time monitor of endocytosis, intracellular distribution, and release of drugs. Study indicate the IFE fluorescence strategy can expediently detect β-glucuronidase in living cells	Gong et al. (2019)
Nitrogen- doped GQDs	FA	MKN 45, HT 29 and MCF7 cells.	Fluorescent imaging of cancer cells	Nanoprobe showed enhanced uptake in FR overexpressing cells	Soleymani et al. (2018)