Emissive metallacages for biomedical applications

Owing to their appealing three-dimensional structures and tunable photophysical properties, emissive metallacages have been widely applied in recognition and sensing, adsorption and separation, catalysis, etc. Recently, the application of emissive metallacages in biomedical fields has emerged as a hot research topic, because multiple biological functionalities can be facilely integrated into metallacage-based platforms to deliver different functions. In this review, the applications of emissive metallacages in bio-imaging, delivery and cancer theranostics are systematically summarized. The dilemmas and challenges of metallacage-based biomedical materials are also raised at the end of this review. We hope this review would provide some guidance for the construction of novel emissive metallacages with biological functions, and further advance the development of emissive metallacages as biomedical materials. [Figure not available: see fulltext.]