Nanotheranostics, which combines optical multiplexed disease detection with therapeutic monitoring in a single modality, has the potential to propel the field of nanomedicine toward genuine personalized medicine. Currently employed mainstream modalities using gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) in diagnosis and treatment are limited by a lack of specificity and potential issues associated with systemic toxicity. Light‐mediated nanotheranostics offers a relatively non‐invasive alternative for cancer diagnosis and treatment by using AuNPs of specific shapes and sizes that absorb near infrared (NIR) light, inducing plasmon resonance for enhanced tumor detection and generating localized heat for tumor ablation. Over the last decade, significant progress has been made in the field of nanotheranostics, however the main biological and translational barriers to nanotheranostics leading to a new paradigm in anti‐cancer nanomedicine stem from the molecular complexities of cancer and an incomplete mechanistic understanding of utilization of Au‐NPs in living systems. This work provides a comprehensive overview on the biological, physical and translational barriers facing the development of nanotheranostics. It will also summarise the recent advances in engineering specific AuNPs, their unique characteristics and, importantly, tunability to achieve the desired optical/photothermal properties.

中文翻译：

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用于光介导癌症治疗的智能金纳米结构：将光学诊断与光热疗法相结合。

纳米治疗学将光学多重疾病检测与单一模式的治疗监测相结合，有潜力推动纳米医学领域迈向真正的个性化医疗。目前在诊断和治疗中使用金纳米粒子（AuNP）的主流方法由于缺乏特异性以及与全身毒性相关的潜在问题而受到限制。光介导的纳米治疗学为癌症诊断和治疗提供了一种相对无创的替代方案，它使用特定形状和尺寸的金纳米粒子吸收近红外（NIR）光，诱导等离振子共振以增强肿瘤检测并产生局部热量以消融肿瘤。在过去的十年中，纳米治疗学领域取得了重大进展，然而，导致抗癌纳米医学新范式的纳米治疗学的主要生物学和转化障碍源于癌症分子的复杂性以及对纳米治疗学利用的不完整机制理解。生命系统中的金纳米颗粒。这项工作全面概述了纳米治疗学发展面临的生物学、物理和转化障碍。它还将总结工程特定 AuNP 的最新进展、其独特的特性，以及重要的是实现所需光学/光热性能的可调性。