Energy-converting biomaterials for cancer therapy: Category, efficiency, and biosafety

Energy-converting biomaterials (ECBs)-mediated cancer-therapeutic modalities have been extensively explored, which have achieved remarkable benefits to overwhelm the obstacles of traditional cancer-treatment modalities. Energy-driven cancer-therapeutic modalities feature their distinctive merits, including noninvasiveness, low mammalian toxicity, adequate therapeutic outcome, and optimistical synergistic therapeutics. In this advanced review, the prevailing mainstream ECBs can be divided into two sections: Reactive oxygen species (ROS)-associated energy-converting biomaterials (ROS-ECBs) and hyperthermia-related energy-converting biomaterials (H-ECBs). On the one hand, ROS-ECBs can transfer exogenous or endogenous energy (such as light, radiation, ultrasound, or chemical) to generate and release highly toxic ROS for inducing tumor cell apoptosis/necrosis, including photo-driven ROS-ECBs for photodynamic therapy, radiation-driven ROS-ECBs for radiotherapy, ultrasound-driven ROS-ECBs for sonodynamic therapy, and chemical-driven ROS-ECBs for chemodynamic therapy. On the other hand, H-ECBs could translate the external energy (such as light and magnetic) into heat for killing tumor cells, including photo-converted H-ECBs for photothermal therapy and magnetic-converted H-ECBs for magnetic hyperthermia therapy. Additionally, the biosafety issues of ECBs are expounded preliminarily, guaranteeing the ever-stringent requirements of clinical translation. Finally, we discussed the prospects and facing challenges for constructing the new-generation ECBs for establishing intriguing energy-driven cancer-therapeutic modalities. This article is categorized under: Nanotechnology Approaches to Biology >Nanoscale Systems in Biology.