Recent developments in the use of gold and silver nanoparticles in biomedicine

Gold and silver nanoparticles (NPs) are widely used in the biomedical research both in the therapeutic and the sensing/diagnostics fronts. Both metals share some common optical properties with surface plasmon resonance being the most widely exploited property in therapeutics and diagnostics. Au NPs exhibit excellent light-to-heat conversion efficiencies and hence have found applications primarily in precision oncology, while Ag NPs have excellent antibacterial properties which can be harnessed in biomaterials' design. Both metals constitute excellent biosensing platforms owing to their plasmonic properties and are now routinely used in various optical platforms. The utilization of Au and Ag NPs in the COVID-19 pandemic was rapidly expanded mostly in biosensing and point-of-care platforms and to some extent in therapeutics. In this review article, the main physicochemical properties of Au and Ag NPs are discussed with selective examples from the recent literature. This article is categorized under: Therapeutic Approaches and Drug Discovery > Nanomedicine for Oncologic Disease Diagnostic Tools > In Vitro Nanoparticle-Based Sensing Nanotechnology Approaches to Biology > Nanoscale Systems in Biology.