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Updated: Feb 6, 2026

Registered Bioimaging of Nanomaterials for Diagnostic and Therapeutic Monitoring
Published on: December 9, 2010
Recent Advances in Functional-Polymer-Decorated Transition-Metal Nanomaterials for Bioimaging and Cancer Therapy
Wei Zhao1, Aihua Li1, Aitang Zhang1
1College of Materials Science and Engineering, Institutor for Graphene Applied Technology Innovation, Qingdao University, 308 Ningxia Road, Qingdao, 266071, China.
Abstract:
In this review, we focus on recent advances in the synthesis of polymer-functionalized transition-metal-based nanomaterials and follow this up by discussing their applications in bioimaging diagnosis and cancer therapy. Transition-metal-based nanomaterials show great potential in cancer therapy owing to their intensive near-IR absorption, excellent photothermal conversion efficiency, strong X-ray attenuation, and magnetic properties. Functional polymers are usually introduced by a one-step or multistep method to further endow these nanomaterials with great biocompatibility and physiological stability. Polymer-decorated transition-metal nanomaterials show great potential in multimodal imaging diagnosis (photoacoustic imaging, computed tomography, photoluminescence imaging, positron emission tomography, etc.) and cancer therapy (chemotherapy, photothermal therapy, microwave therapy, radiotherapy, photodynamic therapy). At the end of this review, the prospects of these polymer-decorated transition-metal-based nanomaterials are also discussed.
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