Multi functional carbon dots for precision cancer treatment: Synthesis regulation, performance enhancement, and future applications.

Carbon dots (CDs) are an emerging kind of carbon nanomaterials with characteristic sizes less than 10 nm, graphitized carbon nuclei and a rich variety of surface functional groups. Due to its simple and rapid synthesis, unique electronic structure, excellent photoluminescence properties, good biocompatibility, and environmental friendliness, CDs have been widely used in fields i.e. antibacterial, analytical detection, biological imaging, drug delivery, and controlling environmental pollutants. Especially in the emerging field of biomedical anti-tumor therapy, its application is becoming increasingly widespread, mainly based on the stimulation of CDs in specific chemical environments, i.e., light and ultrasound can increase intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS) levels, disrupt intracellular redox balance, and achieve the effect of killing tumors. Therefore, it has attracted the attention of researchers around the world. However, there is currently a lack of in-depth analysis on the application of CDs in biological anti-tumor, and the understanding of the development and new breakthroughs of CDs is relatively limited. Therefore, it is necessary to conduct a timely and comprehensive review of the widely dispersed literature on their application in biological anti-tumor, to stimulate ideas that can lead to more innovative practical applications. The scope of our review is significantly different from other existing review papers in similar fields. It focuses on the potential correlation between its synthesis and surface structure with its specific applications, and analyzes the fundamental reasons for its application in emerging therapies such as photothermal therapy, photodynamic therapy, and sonodynamic therapy (As shown in Figure 1). Through an overall review of the latest research results, a detailed summary and discussion will be conducted on the bottlenecks and opportunities of CDs in the application of cancer treatment in the future.