适体功能化的金纳米棒用于癌症靶向治疗的研究进展

金纳米棒(gold nanorods，GNRs)具有特殊的光学性质、较大的比表面积、出色的光热转换性能、表面易修饰等特点，在药物递送、光疗、生物成像和化学传感等领域应用十分广泛。适体是短的单链DNA或RNA片段，可特异性识别癌细胞或其表面的膜蛋白。近年来，适体功能化的GNRs在癌症靶向治疗领域显示出良好的应用前景。根据GNRs对癌症作用机制的差异，本文从光热疗法、光动力疗法、化疗和联合疗法4个方面总结了适体功能化的GNRs在癌症靶向治疗中的最新进展，并对该领域面临的主要挑战和发展趋势进行了探讨与展望。

Research Progress in Cancer Treatment of Aptamer Functionalized Gold Nanorods

Gold nanorods (GNRs) have attracted great attention in various biomedical applications such as drug delivery, photothermal therapy, photodynamic therapy, and photoacoustic imaging because of their larger specific surface area, easy synthesis, surface modification, stability, and strong absorption and scattering in NIR region. Aptamers are oligonucleotide sequences with a length of about 20-80 bases which have abilities to bind to specific target molecules, enabling specific recognition and binding to cancer cells or their membrane proteins. Aptamer could act as ligands and be modified onto GNRs, aptamer-functionalized GNRs can actively target and identify cancer cells, showing a good application prospect in the field of cancer therapy. Herein, we overview the recent progress in the designs and applications of aptamer-targeted GNRs for cancer therapy. GNRs can be used as photothermal agents, as well as nanocarriers of drugs, photosensitizers, and small interfering RNA to achieve cancer combina- tion therapies. According to the differences in the mechanism of cancer therapy, the applications of aptamer-functionalized GNRs nanosystems for cancer therapy are reviewed, which are divided into four aspects:photothermal therapy, photodynamic therapy, chemotherapy, and combination therapy. Combination therapy includes photothermal therapy/chemotherapy, photothermal therapy/photodynamic therapy, photothermal therapy/gene therapy, photothermal therapy/chemotherapy/gene therapy, and photothermal therapy/chemotherapy/photodynamic therapy. Finally, we elaborate on the current challenge and future perspectives of aptamer-functionalized GNRs for cancer therapy.