Melanin-based nanoplatforms are biocompatible nanomaterials with a variety of unique physicochemical properties such as strong photothermal conversion ability, excellent drug binding capacity, strong metal chelation capacity, high chemical reactivity and versatile adhesion ability. These innate talents not only make melanin-based nanoplatforms be an inborn theranostic nanoagent for photoacoustic imaging-guided photothermal therapy of cancers, but also enable them to be conveniently transferred into cancer-targeting drug delivery systems and multimodality imaging nanoprobes. Due to the intriguing properties, melanin-based nanoplatforms have attracted much attention in investigations of cancer diagnosis and therapy. This review provides an overview of recent research advances in applications of melanin-based nanoplatforms in the fields of cancer diagnosis and therapy including cancer photothermal therapy, anticancer drug delivery, cancer-specific multimodal imaging and theranostics, etc. The remaining challenges and prospects of melanin-based nanoplatforms in biomedical applications are discussed at the end of this review.

黑色素基纳米平台是具有多种独特物理化学特性的生物相容性纳米材料，例如强大的光热转化能力，出色的药物结合能力，强大的金属螯合能力，高化学反应性和通用的粘附能力。这些先天的才能不仅使基于黑色素的纳米平台成为用于光声成像引导的癌症光热疗法的先天性治疗学纳米剂，而且使它们能够方便地转移到靶向癌症的药物递送系统和多模态成像纳米探针中。由于其迷人的特性，基于黑色素的纳米平台已在癌症诊断和治疗研究中引起了广泛关注。