Plasmonic Gold Nanostar-Mediated Photothermal Immunotherapy

Cancer is among the leading cause of death around the world, causing close to 10 million deaths each year. Significant effort must be pushed toward novel technologies that can detect and treat cancer early and effectively to reduce cancer recurrences, treatment costs, and mortality. Gold nanoparticles (GNP) have been given particular attention for its use with photo-induced hyperthermia coupled with novel immunotherapy methods to provide a new platform for highly selective and less invasive cancer treatment. Among the different GNP platforms, gold nanostars (GNS) have a unique star-shaped geometric structure that allows superior light absorption and photothermal heating. This photothermal effect have also been found to amplify the anti-tumor immune response and can be exploited with adjuvant treatments using immune checkpoint inhibitors. This combination known as Synergistic Immuno Photo Nanotherapy (SYMPHONY) have been shown to reverse tumor-mediated immunosuppression and has led to effective and long-lasting immunity against not only primary tumors but also cancer metastasis in what can be described as an anticancer vaccine. This overview highlights the development and applications of GNS-mediated therapy developed in our laboratory for cancer treatment. This paper also presents recent results of photothermal studies of GNS for in vitro and in vivo applications.