Current Progress on Gold Nanoparticle-Mediated Gene Delivery for Human Cancer Treatment

¹ Department of Biological Science, School of Medical and Life Sciences, Sunway University, 47500 Petaling Jaya, Malaysia
² Department of Medical Science, School of Medical and Life Sciences, Sunway University, 47500 Petaling Jaya, Malaysia

^* Corresponding author: jason.d3@imail.sunway.edu.my

Abstract

Cancer treatments have become less effective in recent years, with cancer cells mutating into more non-sensitive against a plethora of chemotherapeutics. While gene therapy can lead to cancer cell sensitization and effective treatment, gene-related drugs are prone to degradation and highly unstable. Nanoparticles can thus be used for the delivery of genes as well as other therapeutic compounds into cancer cells. Gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) have been used in cancer therapy especially for drug delivery due to their ease of synthesis and modification. AuNPs were also considered versatile nanoparticles as their characteristics could be easily customized and modulated for therapy, monitoring, or delivery. Another important characteristic that made AuNPs viable for cancer therapy is surface plasmonic resonance (SPR) which enables hyperthermia-based therapy and imaging. Therefore, utilizing AuNPs novel approaches in multi-modal therapies is achievable, where targeted gene and chemotherapy coupled with other modalities such as hyperthermia-based therapy could be performed. This article reviews several reported cases of AuNPs-based gene therapy as well as notable theranostic therapy that includes SPR characteristic utilization for therapy as well as cancer imaging.