The potential clinical applications of radionuclide labeled/doped gold-based nanomaterials

Radionuclides have been widely used for multimodal imaging and radioisotope therapy of cancer. Various nanomaterials have been developed as excellent nanocarriers of radionuclides for the targeted delivery into tumors, in order to minimize the unnecessary side effect and enhance the therapeutic efficacy of radiotherapy. Among those nanomaterials, gold nanomaterials with tunable morphologies, easy modification, good biological safety, and radiation sensitization capability are excellent candidates for cancer theranostics. Given the superior performance of gold-based nanomaterials in biomedicine, we summary the recent advance of radionuclide labeled/doped gold-based nanomaterials for cancer theranostics. In this review article, we will discuss the methods for labelling or doping radionuclides onto gold nanomaterials, their applications for nuclear imaging and Cerenkov luminescence (CL) imaging, as well as the radioisotope therapy of cancer, and finally the toxicity evaluation of radionuclide labeled/doped gold-based nanomaterials. We hope that our review article would provide guidance for non-experts to design the radiolabeled nanomaterials for cancer imaging guided therapy.