Photothermal therapy (PTT) at present, following the temperature definition for conventional thermal therapy, usually keeps the temperature of lesions at 42-45 °C or even higher. Such high temperature kills cancer cells but also increases the damage of normal tissues near lesions through heat conduction and thus brings about more side effects and inhibits therapeutic accuracy. Here we use tempe...

Near-infrared (NIR)-light-triggered therapy platforms are now considered as a new and exciting possibility for clinical nanomedicine applications. As a promising photothermal agent, polypyrrole (PPy) nanoparticles have been extensively studied for the hyperthermia in cancer therapy due to their strong NIR light photothermal effect and excellent biocompatibility. However, the photothermal applic...

Photothermal therapy, as a physical therapeutic technique to kill cancer, has generated a great deal of interest. Photothermal agents hence play a critical role in this modern therapy. We report the use of transition metal oxides as photothermal agents based on PEGylated WO3-x nanoparticles. The well-prepared nanoparticles presented effective results during photothermal therapy both in vitro an...

PURPOSE Nanoparticle (NP)-enabled near infrared (NIR) photothermal therapy has realized limited success in in vivo studies as a potential localized cancer therapy. This is primarily due to a lack of successful methods that can prevent NP uptake by the reticuloendothelial system, especially the liver and kidney, and deliver sufficient quantities of intravenously injected NPs to the tumor site. H...

Photothermal therapy has inspired numerous interests due to its minimal invasion, easy to perform, and possibilities to treat embedded tumors in vital regions. In this review, examples where various types of photothermal nanoagents including carbon-based, organic near-infrared dye-based, polymer-based nanomaterials have been utilized to converse near-infrared light energy to heating within tumo...

The theory for a sensitive spectroscopy based on the photothermal deflection of a laser beam is developed. We consider cw and pulsed cases of both transverse and collinear photothermal deflection spectroscopy for solids, liquids, gases, and thin films. The predictions of the theory are experimentally verified, its implications for imaging and microscopy are given, and the sources of noise are a...

Gold nanorods are effective photothermal agents in diagnosis and treatment of cancer due to their specific near-infrared laser absorption. However, tumor photothermal therapy by nanorods alone is lack of targeting. Here, we described a novel nanocomplex made up of gold nanorods, porphyrin, and trastuzumab, called TGNs and investigated the TGN-mediated photothermal therapy as a potential alterna...

We studied the phenomenon of photothermal bleaching - a gradual reduction of contrast agent particles during repeated scans in photoacoustic microscopy. The dependence of the photothermal bleaching rate on the excitation pulse energy, pulse duration, and the absorber's size was determined while the laser focal diameter was held constant. Our results showed that, the dependence of the phototherm...

Molecular imaging is a powerful tool for studying disease progression and potential therapies in animals. Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is an important biomedical imaging modality, filling the niche between ultrasound and microscopy. However, OCT suffers from an inherent lack of molecular contrast (the ability to distinguish a molecule of interest from others). This is because the scatteri...

Erbium laser wavelengths circa 3,000 nm are highly energy efficient and spatially accmate for photothermal ablation; their photothermal coagulation depths are significantly shorter than gingival blood vessel diameters. Carbon dimdde (CO~ laser wavelengths circa 10,000 nm are exh·emely effective and spatially accmate photothermal ablation tools with exemplary coagulation ability as a result of a...