Magnetic Nanoparticle Hyperthermia in Cancer Therapy—Recent Advances and Challenges

Dear colleagues,

The oncological therapy based on magnetic particle (MNP) heating is commonly known as magnetic fluid hyperthermia (MFH), which has been successfully trialled as a co-adjuvant of radiotherapy for the treatment of glioblastoma, and currently also as a mono-therapy for treating prostate cancer.

Substantial efforts have been directed towards developing nanoparticles with superior heating efficiency and designing synergistic therapeutic nanoplatforms combining hyperthermia and other types of treatment, including chemotherapy and immunotherapy. However, several challenges still hinder the full development of the potential of this technique. The main ones are related to the lack of standardization regarding important aspects (MNP characterization, the instrumentation, and the parameters employed in pre-clinical studies), the reliability of temperature monitoring during treatments with the current techniques, the establishment of accurate treatment-planning platforms, and the understanding of the cellular death mechanisms triggered by magnetic hyperthermia and the interactions between MNPs and biological entities. Therefore, a large translational gap still remains between advances in fundamental research and the implementation of magnetic hyperthermia as an established clinical procedure. To bridge this gap, a close collaboration and dialogue between material scientists, engineers, chemists, biologists, clinicians and regulatory bodies is needed.

This Special Issue will gather recent advances in the field of magnetic hyperthermia, focusing both on the most promising advances and the obstacles that must be overcome from a translational point of view.

We invite researchers from different fields to contribute original articles and reviews on relevant topics, such as:

• The design and synthesis of magnetic nanoparticles for hyperthermia;
• The characterization and simulation of the heating efficiency of magnetic nanoparticles in biological environments;
• Analysis of the cellular and molecular effects of nanoscale heating;
• The development of instrumentation and software for magnetic hyperthermia;
• Nanoscale thermometry;
• Pre-clinical investigations.

Dr. Raluca Maria Fratila
Dr. Daniel Ortega
Guest Editors

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• Magnetic nanoparticles
• Magnetic hyperthermia
• Cancer therapy
• Biomedical applications
• Theranostics
• Nanomaterials
• Cell death mechanisms
• Nanoscale thermometry
• Nanomedicine