Pandia: Gold Nanorods and Their Applications in Cancer Therapy and In Vivo Imaging in Companion Animals and Their Potential Application to Humans - Nanotechnology for Biomedical Imaging and Diagnostics - page 343

5-year survival rate of those patients treated with hyperthermia was 53 versus 0% for
those offered radiation alone [11].
hyperthermia methods with clinical history include radio frequency (RF), laser,
cryogenics, and ultrasound. Some basic hyperthermia techniques include endocavity
irrigation and whole patient and regional perfusion techniques. however, none of
these approaches enable tumor-specific energy deposition. Recently, this has been
shown to be solved with plasmonic nanomaterial such as AuNRs.
The electromagnetic properties of plasmonic nanomaterials have been harnessed
to develop ultrasensitive diagnostic [12, 13], spectroscopic [14, 15], and, more
recently, therapeutic technologies [16-19]. In particular, tunable plasmonic nano-
materials have attracted attention for their immense optical absorption coefficients
and potential as injectable nanoantennas that can target tumors and locally convert
otherwise benign electromagnetic energy to thermal energy for ablation. Currently,
tumor ablation approaches in clinical practice, including RF, laser, and focused ultra-
sound methods, lack intrinsic tumor specificity to energy absorption. The inability to
selectively heat tumor tissues over surrounding compartments necessitates efforts to
externally direct applied energy toward tumor tissues, making effective treatment of
tumor margins and complex tumor geometries very challenging. By providing a
tumor-specific heat source (808 nm laser), nanoantennas have the very real potential
to considerably broaden the clinical applicability of thermal therapies by simpli-
fying their integration with current therapeutic practices (including improving
margin clearance in surgery and synergizing with regional radiation therapies) and
reducing morbidity due to off-target heating. Furthermore, by pulsing the external
energy source used, tumor-targeted nanoantennas can theoretically ablate with
single-cell precision, thereby providing improved accuracy over standard surgical
methods and opening the possibility of precisely treating complex tumor margins in
sensitive tissues.
To date, Nanopartz AuNRs have shown considerable efficacy for tumor ablation
using near-infrared (NIR) laser light [16, 20, 21]. These results highlight the
clinical promise of Nanopartz AuNRs as photothermal therapies. From a material
perspective, nanoantennas with enhanced circulation times in vivo , increased
absorption coefficients per weight, and narrower absorption spectra would more
efficiently permeate tumors after intravenous (IV) administration, amplify the pho-
tothermal contrast between antennas and normal tissue, and allow improved tumor
treatment at lower laser intensities or at greater depths.
The long precedence of gold nanoparticles in clinical rheumatoid arthritis ther-
apies, as well as in more recent trials, makes AuNRs appealing new candidates
for nanoantenna-based photothermal ablation and a wide array of other biomedical
applications.

12.2.2 history and synthesis of nanopartz nanorods

In 2007, Nanopartz, Inc., commercialized rod-shaped gold nanoparticles. Our
exclusively licensed, patented technology [22] is based on the Murphy seed-based
technique [23, 24]. Nanopartz offers over 30 different highly monodisperse AuNRs