The advances in applying inorganic fluorescent nanomaterials for the detection of hepatocellular carcinoma and other cancers

Abstract

Cancer has become the leading cause of death worldwide. Among known cancers, hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) ranks as the fifth most prevalent cancer and lacks effective means of detection at an early stage. Various nanomaterials have been extensively explored as optical reporters in HCC and other cancer detections. They exhibit great potential for cancer cell diagnosis. In this mini-review, we describe recent application progress of three important fluorescence inorganic nanomaterials, namely, semiconductor quantum dots (QDs), upconverting nanoparticles (UCNPs) and carbon dots (CDs), in HCC and other cancer cells detection. We also point out some intrinsic drawbacks of these nanomaterials, which need to be overcome and give our suggestions to accelerate the development of nanoparticle applications in HCC and other cancer detection fields.