Determining precise diagnosis and proper therapeutic treatments for preventing and controlling pandemics and other bio-threads is central to human health. A variety of nanoparticle systems have been proposed which may even incorporate multiple functionalities that allow both detection and therapeutic actions. Metal nanoparticles in particular are of great interest because they display exceptional optical properties, related to localized surface plasmon resonances (LSPR), which give rise to well-defined absorption and scattering peaks in the visible and near-IR spectral range.