Cancer remains one of the most pressing global health challenges, with current treatments often limited by toxicity and poor targeting. Metal-based nanomaterials (MNMs) have emerged as promising candidates to overcome these limitations due to their unique catalytic, photothermal, and immunomodulatory properties. This review provides an overview of platinum-, iron-, manganese-, and copper-based MNMs, highlighting their mechanisms in cancer therapy. These include catalytic generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS), photothermal conversion, and immune activation, enabling multi-modal therapies such as photothermal therapy (PTT), photodynamic therapy (PDT), chemodynamic therapy (CDT), and immunotherapy. The review also discusses the challenges of translating MNMs into clinical practice, including biosafety concerns, pharmacokinetics, and scalability. Finally, future perspectives on the design of biodegradable, immune-integrated, and imaging-guided MNMs for personalized cancer treatment are proposed.
Tang et al. (Wed,) studied this question.