Co-delivery of radiotherapy agents and siRNA that relates to the resistance mechanism in the nanoparticles could effectively reduce the resistance of radiotherapy and achieve synergistic effects.
Inorganic materials can also be used as imaging and radiotherapy agents demonstrating that NP-based therapies can act as "precision medicine" for targeting tumours and infections while leaving healthy tissue intact.
Besides systemic treatment, these patients frequently require local radiotherapy, agents such as bisphosphonates, and long-term analgesic medications.
It was recognised by Hainfield et al. (2004) in some of the earliest studies of NPs as a radiotherapy agent, that the concentration of NPs in tumour tissue plays an important role in the radiosensitisation effects, and it has since been reported that the concentration of AuNPs plays a larger role in radiation dose enhancement than their size (Mesbahi et al. 2013; Babaei and Ganjalikhani 2014).
The improvement of biosynthesized AgNPs has allowed better control of shape and size more suitable for the increasing biomedical applications, such as implantable biomaterials, tumor radiotherapy sensitization agent, molecular imaging agents, biological markers, and drug delivery [20, 21].
Newer approaches such as peptide receptor radiotherapy, systemic agents targeting vascular endothelial growth factor, and mTOR are under development.
The development of multi-target radiotherapy sensitization agents offered a promising method for the treatment of NPC.
Based on the above data, Rhein is likely to become an attractive lead compound for the future design of multi-target radiotherapy sensitization agents.
Many commonly used anticancer treatments, such as radiotherapy, alkylating agents and camptothecins, damage DNA by causing SSBs, and prevention of SSB repair has been shown in preclinical studies to improve cell kill [ 19].
In addition, the absorption of 100 200 kV photons by AuNPs results in a potentiation of ionizing radiation, suggesting that AuNPs may be useful as radiotherapy enhancing agents in cancer treatment.
Medical data, for example, cancer diagnosis (International Classification of Diseases, 10th edition (ICD-10)), 17 metastases, ongoing or previous tumour-directed treatment (chemotherapy, radiotherapy, biological agents and hormonal therapy), and recent hospital discharges were recorded, as were medical interventions during hospitalisation and details about the discharge.
