Recent progress and development on polymeric nanomaterials for photothermal therapy: a brief overview

Photothermal therapy (PTT) is a rapidly expanding area which has attracted great research attention, and has emerged as a promising method for cancer treatment recently. PTT mainly relies on the local heating effect from photothermal agents (PTAs), which can transform the energy of light into heat. Various inorganic PTAs such as gold nanorods, carbon nanomaterials, layered transition metal dichalcogenides and various polymeric nanomaterials have been developed for PTT applications. However, inorganic PTAs are normally poorly biodegradable and potentially toxic. Polymeric PTAs possess many advantages in comparison with inorganic PTAs and have become the focus for PTT applications very recently. In this article, the recent advances and progress of polymers such as conjugated polymers and melanin-like polymers for PTT applications are introduced. The future direction, challenges and potential development of polymeric PTAs for efficient PTT are also addressed. The objective of this review is to give a brief overview of this emerging field to polymer chemists and material scientists.