Gold nanoparticles: A versatile platform for cancer diagnosis, imaging and therapy

Gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) hold great promise for the clinical applications. They havea series of advantages including bio-inert nature, well-controlled morphologies, easysurface modification and unique optical properties, and have been proven to be anexcellent scaffold for diverse biomedical applications including diagnosis, imaging andtherapies. In this chapter, we first introduce four typical AuNPs that can be well developedfor biomedical usage, and discuss their optical properties and surface modifications.Then, we address the important application of AuNPs as a contrast agent or fluorescentprobe for the diagnosis/imaging of cancers in vitro and in vivo, and further discuss theiruse for photothermal therapy and as a vehicle for gene and drug delivery.