Nanomaterials-based hyperthermia: A literature review from concept to applications in chemistry and biomedicine.

Hyperthermia, the mild elevation of temperature to 40-45 °C, can induce cancer cell death and enhance the effects of radiotherapy and chemotherapy. Due to the nature of hyperthermia, especially their ability to combine nanotechnology, hyperthermia possesses the potential to open a novel paradigm for the therapeutic strategies. However, achievement of its full potential as a clinically relevant treatment modality has been restricted by its inability to effectively and preferentially heat malignant cells. The main challenge of current hyperthermia treatment is to adequately heat whole volumes of deep-seated tumors without overheating surrounding healthy tissues. So, hyperthermia is under clinical trials (research study with people) and is not widely available. In this Review, we summarize a basic knowledge of hyperthermia before focusing on their applications to the cancer therapy and synthesis. We try to give a comprehensive view of the role of nanomaterials in the designing of hyperthermia-based therapeutic protocols and compare the studies in this field with the purpose of providing a source of helpful information for planning forthcoming hyperthermia researches. However, establishing comparisons between hyperthermia studies is a challenge due to the widely different conditions used by different authors, which, in some cases, is aggravated by the lack of crucial information concerning a certain aspect of the procedure.