Application of bismuth sulfide based nanomaterials in cancer diagnosis and treatment

Artikel i vetenskaplig tidskrift, 2023

Cancer is a complicated disease with a significant degree of heterogeneity, despite having made impressive advances in the field of cancer treatment, cancer remains a major threat to human life and health. The complexity of cancer on the genetic and phenotypic planes defines its clinical diversity and the difficulty of treatment. The increasing incidence of integrative types as well as individual types of cancer with the passage of time has prompted the development of novel cancer treatment strategies. Current treatment protocols are based on correcting gene mis-expression, blocking nutrient delivery to the tumor, or destroying the cancer cells. Often, surgery cannot completely eliminate all cancer cells in the body, leaving the cancer at risk of recurrence and high mortality. Chemotherapy and radiotherapy have serious side effects on normal tissue cells in the body while killing cancer cells, and these approaches are still unsatisfactory due to insufficient specificity and dose limitations. The development of novel drugs with specific targeted therapies or site-specific delivery systems to deliver therapeutic agents can greatly avoid the toxicity to healthy tissues caused by non-specificity. The preparation of nanomaterials is the most important basic technology in nanotechnology research, as well as a prerequisite for nanoapplication technology and nano-industrialization, which has been the key focus of nanotechnology researchers’ attention and research. With the development of nanotechnology, multifunctional nanomaterials, which integrate various diagnostic and therapeutic functions, have become the most active field in nanoscale research, and have been applied in the fields of early screening of tumors, identification of tumor biomarkers, targeted release of chemotherapeutic drugs and development of novel therapies. After decades of development, biomedical nanomaterials have been applied to cancer diagnosis, tumor imaging, drug loading, tumor therapy, etc. They have excellent biocompatibility and biodistribution, with advantages unmatched over traditional therapeutic methods. Among them, Bi2S3 based nanomaterials have attracted great attention in the biomedical field due to their special photothermal effect and biocompatibility, etc. The authors summarize the preparation methods of Bi2S3 based nanomaterials with different morphological dimensions reported in the literature, as well as effective strategies for constructing different heterogeneous structures. Currently, Bi2S3 based nanomaterials have been widely used in cancer diagnosis. The main strategy is the combination of various functionalized probe-loaded Bi2S3 with various imaging methods to determine tumor boundaries, histological analysis and 3D stereoscopic imaging detection. Meanwhile, due to its superior photothermal conversion efficiency and X-ray attenuation coefficient, Bi2S3 based nanomaterials have been widely used in a range of fields such as photothermal therapy, photodynamic therapy, radio sensitization therapy, immunotherapy and chemotherapy by means of rational modifications and loading. Since individual imaging modalities cannot provide complete information about the tumor treatment, Bi2S3 based nanomaterials with multimodal imaging capabilities can enable real-time monitoring of tumors and real-time observation of therapeutic agent metabolism, providing guidance for tumor treatment. In addition, a mono-therapeutic approach is often unable to completely inhibit and kill tumors, so Bi2S3 based nanomaterials integrating multiple therapeutic approaches can not only reduce the dose of chemotherapeutic drugs, but also cause serious damage to tumor cells and inhibit the metastasis of cancer cells, which greatly reduces the possibility of tumor recurrence and is of great significance for a favorable prognosis of tumor treatment. Finally, the authors highlight and discuss the biosafety and biodistribution of Bi2S3 based nanomaterials, as well as summarize methods to improve the biocompatibility of nanoparticles, providing indicative clues for further biosafety applications of Bi2S3 based nanomaterials.