• cancer
• cancro
• hyperthermia
• Ipertermia
• nanoparticelle di ossidi
• oxide nanoparticles

Cancer is one of the most serious public health problems worldwide and one of the leading causes of death. It accounts for millions of deaths every year and the incident rate is increasing. Cancer develops via a multistep carcinogenesis process involving numerous cellular physiological systems such as cell signaling and apoptosis, making it a complex disease. It starts as a a localized condition, but it tends to expand in different sites within the body, which makes cancer extremely difficult to treat. Currently the most commonly used therapies include chemotherapy and radiotherapy, however cancer therapy is still far from being optimal since it presents several drawbacks: nonspecific distribution of anticancer agents, cytotoxicity and inadequate drug concentrations reaching the tumor site. To overcome these issues new approaches have been introduced, including nanomedicine. Nanomaterials, due to their small size, comparable to most biological entities, can be easily administered to the patient and used, for instance, as drug carriers increasing the treatment efficiency and specificity and decreasing the drugs’ toxicities at the same time. In this regard, one of the most recent proposed therapies is the hyperthermia cancer therapy, in which human tissues are exposed to high temperatures in order to damage and kill the tumorous cells or to make them more sensitive to certain drugs and radiations. In the photothermal hyperthermia on the other hand, plasmonic nanoparticles are administered to the patient and then a radiation of a proper wavelength is applied to interact with them and causing their heating, leading to the death of the tumor cells, while the healthy ones are left unaltered. In this framework, ITO NPs represent a valid alternative to gold nanostructures, which are the most widely used in this field, but have many disadvantages that need to be overcome.