Targeted Silica Nanoparticles for PhotoDynamic Therapy (PDT)

Abstract

In the last decade, engineered nanoparticles have become an important class of new materials with several properties that make them very attractive in a variety of fields. In particular, nanotechnology has been applied to diverse medical and biological applications ranging from biomarkers and molecular diagnostics to drug discovery and drug delivery. The importance of such applications pushed the National Institute of Health (USA) to introduce the term \u201cnanomedicine\u201d to describe the nanotechnologies applied to human diseases[1]. The peculiar properties of silica nanoparticles make them well suited to the development of smart nanomaterials for medicine and particularly for Photo Dynamic Therapy (PDT) and imaging