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Cancer is one of the most dreaded diseases to afflict humanity. During our lifetimes, most of use will know at least one person that is diagnosed with cancer. Remarkable progress has been made in the last few decades in our fight against the one hundred or more diseases that make up what we know as cancer. Yet, cancer remains one of the gravest threats to human health.
The simple fact is that any specific form of the disease and its progression can be quite different for any given person. The program at WFU Nanotech focuses on the development of novel "smart" approaches to cancer that can be tailored to the individual. Here are a few of our activities...
Smart nanoTherapeutics for Cancer Program at NANOTECH is
based
upon novel routes to localized hyperthermia and variations
therein. Hyperthermia (or photo-ablative) techniques destroy
tumoragenic tissues through the direct application of heat. The
tumor tissue that is heated to above about 52 C dies. Unfortunately it
is challenging to get only a small volume of tissue within the body to
this temperature without heating the surrounding tissue. Thus
tumor erradication using this technique requires a very local
application of heating. Researchers at WFU Nanotech in
conjunction with the Comprehensive Cancer Center of WFU have devised a
novel approach to this problem. Read about our recent work here.
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Suzy V. Torti, Fiona Byrne, Orla Whelan, Nicole Levi, Burak Ucer, Michael Schmid, Frank M. Torti, Steven Akman, Jiwen Liu, Pulickel M. Ajayan, Omkaram Nalamasu and David L. Carroll “Photo-dynamic Therapeutics based on CNx Multi-Walled Nanotubes” International Journal of Nanomedicine 2(4)707-714, 2007
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Nicole Levi-Polyachenko, Eric Merkel, Bradley T. Jones, David Carroll, John H. Stewart IV, Rapid Photothermal Intracellular Drug Delivery Using Multi-Walled Carbon Nanotubes, Molecular Pharmaceutics (accepted 2009)
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Andrew Burke, Xuanfeng Ding, Ravi Singh, Robert A. Kraft, Nicole Levi-Polyachenko, Marissa Nichole Rylander, Chris Szot, Cara Buchanan, Jon Whitney, Jessica Fisher, Heather C. Hatcher, Ralph D’Agostino Jr., Nancy D. Kock, P. M. Ajayan, David L. Carroll, Steven Akman, Frank M. Torti, Suzy V. Torti, Long-term survival following a single treatment of kidney tumors with multiwalled carbon nanotubes and near-infrared radiation, accepted in PNAS (2009).
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