Medical Physics Seminar – Monday, September 8, 2014
Simultaneous Imaging and Therapy of Cancer with Multimodal Nanoparticles
Amit Joshi, PhD (guest of Dr. Rockwell Mackie and Kevin W. Eliceiri)
Assistant Professor of Radiology, Molecular Physiology & Biophysics, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas - USA
Primary treatment for cancer includes surgery accompanied with systemically cytotoxic chemotherapy and/or locally cytotoxic radiation treatment. These methods often do not cure the disease completely, and relapsed disease is frequently fatal. In recent years multiple molecular signatures of cancer have been identified, but molecularly directed therapies such as Herceptin for breast cancer, can still fail due to de novo or acquired drug resistance. Alternative cancer treatment based on photothermal response of gold nanostructures engineered to absorb tissue penetrating NIR light has exhibited near 100% efficacy for tumor eradication in animal models, and is a promising addition to the arsenal of clinical therapies for cancer. We have developed a new class of multimodal silica-gold nanostructures, which in addition to providing photothermal therapy, allow for highly sensitive NIR fluorescence imaging, and T2 weighted MR imaging, thus enabling direct visualization of systemically administered nanoparticles in tissue, for better guidance of thermal therapy. In this talk, the multimodal nanostructure design, and applications for breast and pancreatic cancer theranostics will be described.