Oral cancer: Nanoparticles as a new horizon in the diagnosis and phototherapy-based therapies

Oral cancer has affected the health of people by causing an unacceptable high rate of mortality and has the sixth place among the most common types of malignant cancer. In addition, the /available clinical approaches for the diagnosis and treatment of this disease (e.g., magnetic resonance imaging, computed tomography, surgery, and chemoradiotherapy) proved to have a long way to reach an ideal state. Therefore, there is a pressing need for the discovery of effective and feasible early diagnostic and therapeutic strategies in regards to oral cancer. The distinctive features of nanotechnology and nanoparticles, such as small size, surface to volume ratio, etc. that induce many changes in electrical, optical, and magnetic properties, can help in providing early detection and designing a more applicable treatment. Although surgery, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy are included among the most common treatments of oral cancer, yet there are disadvantages to their usage that indicate the need for novel methods with superior therapeutic benefits. One of the new approaches in this field is phototherapy-based therapies that involve photothermal therapy (PTT) and photodynamic therapy (PDT) as the major methods. Despite their advantages, some of the limited potentials of these therapies can be possibly surpassed through the application of nanotechnology.