Table 1.
General properties and therapeutic applications of metallic nanotherapeutics.
| Metal | Types of nanoparticle | Properties | Therapeutic outcome | Imaging | References |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Iron (Fe) | Fe2O3, Fe3O4 | High magnetization, negative MRI contrast, nano-enzymatic activities, Fenton reaction | Hyperthermia, drug delivery, biosensing of biological molecules, chemodynamic therapy, antimicrobial activity | MRI, CT, PET | Pham et al., 2013, 2017; Cortajarena et al., 2014; Arakha et al., 2015; Shen et al., 2018; Piehler et al., 2020 |
| Gold (Au) | Rod, star, shell, triangle, spherical-shaped Au NPs | Surface plasmon resonance effect, high electrical and heat conductivity, radioactivity and high X-ray absorption coefficient, photothermal conversion, catalytic activity, photosensitization | Plasmonic biosensing, diagnosis, photothermal therapy, photodynamic therapy, sonodynamic therapy, drug, and gene delivery | CT, PET, SERS, NIRF, PAT | Xie et al., 2017; Singh et al., 2018; Park et al., 2019; Shanei and Akbari-Zadeh, 2019; Xuan et al., 2019; Kang et al., 2020 |
| Copper (Cu) | CuO, CuS, CuI | Magnetic properties, electrical conductivity, catalytic activity, photothermal conversion efficiency | Radiotherapy, photothermal therapy, photodynamic therapy, Fenton-like reaction, antimicrobial, antifungal therapy, wound healing, biosensing of glucose, peroxidase, antigen, and biomolecules | PET, PAT, NIRF, MRI | Hessel et al., 2011; Pham et al., 2013; Ma et al., 2018; Jiang et al., 2019b;Tao et al., 2019; Sun et al., 2020b |
| Bismuth (Bi) | Bi2O3, Bi2Se3, Bi2S3, BFO, Bi2Te3, BiPO4 | Large X-ray attenuation coefficient, high K-edge value, chemically stable compound in biological environments, ROS production, ATP depletion | Radiotherapy, photothermal therapy, photodynamic therapy, biosensing, antimicrobial therapy, tissue engineering and implantation | CT, MRI, infrared thermography, PA, ultrasonography | Chen et al., 2019b; Badrigilan et al., 2020; El-Batal et al., 2020; Feng et al., 2020; Shahbazi et al., 2020 |
| Platinum (Pt) | Pt-NP | Excellent catalytic agent used in various chemical reactions, platinum-catalyzed hydrogenation reactions are required for fat and vitamin production, platinum interferes with oxidation reactions used for the industrial production of organic acids, surface plasmonic resonance activity, radical scavenger, and peroxidase dismutation | Chemotherapy, photothermal therapy, radiotherapy, antibacterial and antifungal activity, cosmetic production, anti-inflammation effects, Diagnosis of tumor markers, glucose, peroxidase, proteins, and bacteria | CT | Spain et al., 2016; Barman et al., 2018; Samadi et al., 2018; Jiang et al., 2019a; Li et al., 2019d; Eramabadi et al., 2020; Fu et al., 2020 |
| Palladium (Pd) | Pd-NP. Pd-nanosheet, | Thermal stability, photothermal stability, photocatalytic activity, optical properties, electric conductivity, ROS generator, Pro-drug activation in the TME | Chemodynamic therapy, photothermal therapy, drug and gene delivery, biosensing, anti-bacterial therapy, wound healing | PA | Dumas and Couvreur, 2015; Yan et al., 2018; Sivamaruthi et al., 2019; Yang et al., 2019c; Jiang et al., 2020; Murugesan et al., 2020; Phan et al., 2020 |
| Molybdenum (Mo) | MoS2, MoO2, MoO | Localized surface plasmon resonance, photothermal conversion efficacy, catalytic activity, optical properties, good conductivity | Photothermal therapy, peroxidase scavenging, biosensing | PA, NIRF, CT | Liu et al., 2018; Zhan et al., 2018; Li et al., 2019a, 2020a; Sun et al., 2019 |
| Manganese (Mn) | MnO2, Mn3O4, MnCO3, Mn-sheet, MnOx | Excellent catalytic activities, fluorescence quencher, T1-contrast, paramagnetic properties, pH and GSH-responsive disintegration, photothermal conversion efficiency | Chemodynamic therapy, photothermal and photodynamic therapy, radiotherapy, sonodynamic therapy, drug and gene delivery | MRI, PA, US | Casula et al., 2016; Cho et al., 2017; Wu et al., 2019b; Zhang and Ji, 2019; Chen et al., 2020; Gorgizadeh et al., 2020; Gupta and Sharma, 2020; Zhou et al., 2020b |
| Cerium(Ce) | Ce-NP, CeO | Strong X-ray attenuation, intracellular ROS generation, higher interconversion rate (Augustine et al., 2019; Kobyliak et al., 2019; Li et al., 2020b; Naha et al., 2020; Shin and Sung, 2020) of Ce3+/Ce4+, SOD mimetic activity, pH-sensitive pro-oxidant activity, attenuation of the pro-inflammatory cytokines and NF-kB transcription factor expression, nitric oxide scavenging | Anti-inflammation, anti-diabetic, anti-cancer, drug/gene delivery, antibacterial activity, tissue regeneration, ocular oncology | MRI, CT | Celardo et al., 2011; Dhall and Self, 2018; Inbaraj and Chen, 2019; Jia et al., 2019; Abuid et al., 2020 |
| Ruthenium (Ru) | RuNP | Catalytic activity, luminescent property, photothermal conversion efficiency, antioxidant activity | Anti-inflammation, photothermal therapy, biosensing, antibacterial activity | Fluorescence imaging | Liu et al., 2019c, 2020; Xu et al., 2019a; Jayakumar et al., 2020 |
| Tungsten (W) | WO3, WO3−x, MxWO3 | Local SPR, suitable for multiple doping, strong electrical conductivity, higher X-ray absorption coefficient, pyroelectricity properties, NIR-shielding, photocatalyst, water oxidation, carbon dioxide reduction | Photothermal therapy, photodynamic therapy, anti-bacterial therapy, antimicrobial activity | CT, PET | Zhou et al., 2014; Duan et al., 2019; Levin et al., 2019; Wu et al., 2019a; Matharu et al., 2020 |
| Titanium (Ti) | TiO2, TiO1+x | Photocatalytic activity, high tensile strength, high corrosion resistance, biological environment resistant | Antibacterial activity, tissue engineering, dental and bone implantation, drug delivery, sonodynamic therapy, photodynamic therapy | CT | Bogdan et al., 2017; Wang et al., 2017, 2020d; Azzawi et al., 2018; Çeşmeli and Biray Avci, 2019; Thomas and Kwan, 2019; Kim et al., 2020 |