Laser Dynamics Laboratory, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332-0400, USA.
Chem Soc Rev. 2012 Apr 7;41(7):2740-79. doi: 10.1039/c1cs15237h. Epub 2011 Nov 22.
Gold nanoparticles have been used in biomedical applications since their first colloidal syntheses more than three centuries ago. However, over the past two decades, their beautiful colors and unique electronic properties have also attracted tremendous attention due to their historical applications in art and ancient medicine and current applications in enhanced optoelectronics and photovoltaics. In spite of their modest alchemical beginnings, gold nanoparticles exhibit physical properties that are truly different from both small molecules and bulk materials, as well as from other nanoscale particles. Their unique combination of properties is just beginning to be fully realized in range of medical diagnostic and therapeutic applications. This critical review will provide insights into the design, synthesis, functionalization, and applications of these artificial molecules in biomedicine and discuss their tailored interactions with biological systems to achieve improved patient health. Further, we provide a survey of the rapidly expanding body of literature on this topic and argue that gold nanotechnology-enabled biomedicine is not simply an act of 'gilding the (nanomedicinal) lily', but that a new 'Golden Age' of biomedical nanotechnology is truly upon us. Moving forward, the most challenging nanoscience ahead of us will be to find new chemical and physical methods of functionalizing gold nanoparticles with compounds that can promote efficient binding, clearance, and biocompatibility and to assess their safety to other biological systems and their long-term term effects on human health and reproduction (472 references).
金纳米粒子自三个多世纪前首次胶体合成以来，一直被应用于生物医学领域。然而，在过去的二十年中，由于其在艺术和古代医学中的历史应用以及在增强型光电和光伏中的当前应用，其美丽的颜色和独特的电子特性也引起了极大的关注。尽管其起源于朴素的炼金术，但金纳米粒子表现出的物理性质与小分子和体材料以及其他纳米级粒子确实不同。它们独特的组合特性才刚刚开始在一系列医学诊断和治疗应用中得到充分实现。这篇重要的综述将深入探讨这些人工分子在生物医学中的设计、合成、功能化和应用，并讨论它们与生物系统的定制相互作用，以实现改善患者健康的目标。此外，我们还对该主题的快速扩展文献进行了调查，并认为金纳米技术使能的生物医学不仅仅是对（纳米医学）锦上添花，而是真正迎来了生物医学纳米技术的“黄金时代”。展望未来，我们面临的最具挑战性的纳米科学将是找到用可促进有效结合、清除和生物相容性的化合物对金纳米粒子进行功能化的新化学和物理方法，并评估它们对其他生物系统的安全性及其对人类健康和生殖的长期影响（472 篇参考文献）。
