Biomolecule conjugated metal nanoclusters: bio-inspiration strategies, targeted therapeutics, and diagnostics

To help those suffering from viral infections and cancers, scientists are exploring enhanced therapeutic methods via metal nanoclusters (MNCs). This is attributed to the size of the MNCs, which is close to the Fermi wavelength of electrons. The motion of the electrons on the three-dimensional scale is limited, and the continuous energy level structure becomes a distinctive split energy level structure. To help their targeting abilities, MNCs have been combined with biomolecules such as DNA, peptides, and proteins. This not only solves the problem of poor stability but also endows MNCs with new biological characteristics and with diverse structures. In this review, a broad overview of MNC design strategies and biomedical applications is provided. The urgent topics of viral infection and cancer therapies using biomolecules-MNCs are addressed. In addition, the binding modes and conformational changes in biomolecules and MNCs are specifically analyzed.