Over the last decades, photomedicine
has made a significant impact
and progress in treating superficial cancer. With tremendous efforts
many of the technologies have entered clinical trials. Photothermal
agents (PTAs) have been considered as emerging candidates for accelerating
the outcome from photomedicine based cancer treatment. Besides various
inorganic and organic candidates, 2D materials such as graphene, boron
nitride, and molybdenum disulfide have shown significant potential
for photothermal therapy (PTT). The properties such as high surface
area to volume, biocompatibility, stability in physiological media,
ease of synthesis and functionalization, and high photothermal conversion
efficiency have made 2D nanomaterials wonderful candidates for PTT
to treat cancer. The targeting or localized activation could be achieved
when PTT is combined with chemotherapies, immunotherapies, or photodynamic
therapy (PDT) to provide better outcomes with fewer side effects.
Though significant development has been made in the field of phototherapeutic
drugs, several challenges have restricted the use of PTT in clinical
use and hence they have not yet been tested in large clinical trials.
In this review, we attempted to discuss the progress, properties,
applications, and challenges of 2D materials in the field of PTT and
their application in photomedicine.