Advances of nanostructures mediated tumor hyperthermia

Tumor hyperthermia has been recognized as a promising treatment modality. Quick development of nanotechnology in recent years has greatly broadened the application area of hyperthermia and endowed it with attractive new functions. Thermal sensitive nanostructures can absorb energy from the external source, and they can keep the therapeutic heating in the targeted region without damage to surrounding normal tissues. It can also be loaded with therapeutic drugs and/or functionalized with imaging properties to construct multifunctional theranostic nanoplatforms. Significant breakthroughs have been achieved in this new field recently. In this review, we will present an overview of different nanostructures mediated tumor hyperthermia in terms of different external stimuli sources, mainly focusing on the recent advances in this field. Different kinds of recently reported thermal sensitizer, imaging guidance modality, or combined therapies will be briefly elucidated, and the persisting challenges in current nanostructures mediated hyperthermia will also be discussed.