Recent advances in the development of near-infrared organic photothermal agents

Recently, near-infrared (NIR) absorbing photothermal therapy (PTT) agents, which usually apply for deep-tissue cancer treatment, has gained increasing attention due to deep light penetration and high efficacy in tumor ablation. Comparing with most of inorganic agents, NIR absorbing organic photothermal agents (PTTAs) have advantage of quite low cytotoxicity and have been illustrated as promising candidates for clinical application. Moreover, the imaging-guided PTT and combination therapy methods have shown to be optimizable. In this review, the recent NIR absorbing organic PTTAs, such as several fixed structure NIR absorbing organic molecules (e.g., some cyanine dyes, phthalocyanine, porphyrin) with photothermal properties and donor-acceptor (D-A) type organic dyes for PTT applications, will be introduced. And then the potential development and present challenges will be discussed