Recent Breakthroughs in Using Quantum Dots for Cancer Imaging and Drug Delivery Purposes

Aisha Hamidu; William G Pitt; Ghaleb A Husseini

doi:10.3390/nano13182566

Recent Breakthroughs in Using Quantum Dots for Cancer Imaging and Drug Delivery Purposes

Nanomaterials (Basel). 2023 Sep 15;13(18):2566. doi: 10.3390/nano13182566.

Authors

Aisha Hamidu¹, William G Pitt², Ghaleb A Husseini^{3

4}

Affiliations

¹ Biomedical Engineering Program, College of Engineering, American University of Sharjah, Sharjah P.O. Box 26666, United Arab Emirates.
² Department of Chemical Engineering, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT 84602, USA.
³ Materials Science and Engineering Program, College of Arts and Sciences, American University of Sharjah, Sharjah P.O. Box 26666, United Arab Emirates.
⁴ Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, College of Engineering, American University of Sharjah, Sharjah P.O. Box 26666, United Arab Emirates.

Abstract

Cancer is one of the leading causes of death worldwide. Because each person's cancer may be unique, diagnosing and treating cancer is challenging. Advances in nanomedicine have made it possible to detect tumors and quickly investigate tumor cells at a cellular level in contrast to prior diagnostic techniques. Quantum dots (QDs) are functional nanoparticles reported to be useful for diagnosis. QDs are semiconducting tiny nanocrystals, 2-10 nm in diameter, with exceptional and useful optoelectronic properties that can be tailored to sensitively report on their environment. This review highlights these exceptional semiconducting QDs and their properties and synthesis methods when used in cancer diagnostics. The conjugation of reporting or binding molecules to the QD surface is discussed. This review summarizes the most recent advances in using QDs for in vitro imaging, in vivo imaging, and targeted drug delivery platforms in cancer applications.

Keywords: drug delivery; functionalization; in vitro imaging; in vivo imaging; quantum dots.

Publication types

Review

Grants and funding

This research was funded by the Dana Gas Endowed Chair for Chemical Engineering, the American University of Sharjah Faculty Research Grants (FRG20-L-E48, FRG22-C-E08), the Sheikh Hamdan Award for Medical Sciences MRG/18/2020, and the Friends of Cancer Patients (FoCP).