Lanthanide-Doped Upconversion Nanocarriers for Drug and Gene Delivery.
Gibok LeeYong Il ParkPublished in: Nanomaterials (Basel, Switzerland) (2018)
Compared to traditional cancer treatments, drug/gene delivery is an advanced, safe, and efficient method. Nanoparticles are widely used as nanocarriers in a drug/gene delivery system due to their long circulation time and low multi-drug resistance. In particular, lanthanide-doped upconversion nanoparticles (UCNPs) that can emit UV and visible light by near-infrared (NIR) upconversion demonstrated more efficient and safer drug/gene delivery. Because of the low penetration depth of UV and visible light, a photoinduced reaction such as photocleavage or photoisomerization has proven restrictive. However, NIR light has high tissue penetration depth and stimulates the photoinduced reaction through UV and visible emissions from lanthanide-doped UCNPs. This review discusses the optical properties of UCNPs that are useful in bioapplications and drug/gene delivery systems using the UCNPs as a photoreaction inducer.
Keyphrases
- visible light
- photodynamic therapy
- energy transfer
- metal organic framework
- quantum dots
- drug release
- drug delivery
- adverse drug
- single molecule
- emergency department
- electron transfer
- optical coherence tomography
- fluorescence imaging
- gene expression
- dna methylation
- transcription factor
- papillary thyroid
- lymph node metastasis