A 3D MICROFLUIDIC TUMOR CONSTRUCT TO DETERMINE TRANSPORT AND PHOTOTHERMAL PROPERTIES OF SINGLE WALLED NANOHORNS

摘要

Photothermal therapy is a cancer treatment that utilizes light energy to deposit specific amounts of heat to effectively kill cells in a specified tumor region. While Hyperthermia has been widely used for centuries as a treatment option for a variety of diseases, Localized Hyperthermia, as seen in photothermal therapies, has seen a rapid increase in use as a cancer treatment due to its non-invasive nature, low cost, simplicity, and reduced complications as compared to other currently available resection options [1]. The inclusion of nanoparticles that are capable of intense absorption in a specific wavelength band allows for higher selectivity of this thermal dose based upon the location of the delivered nanoparticles through both the additional absorption of laser energy, which gets deposited as heat, in the desired location containing the photoabsorbers and by lowering the amount of energy or power of the laser necessary to affect the region of interest, thus lowering the energy applied to the non-desired thermal damage region. Current in vitro evaluations of these nanoparticle mediated photothermal therapies are limited in their scope, with most of the effort being focused on studying just the heat production aspect of these photoabsorbing nanomaterials while additionally looking at the direct effect of this heat produced on the cells and their resulting viability. Although these studies are extremely important, and the information they gain is necessary when evaluating the efficacies of different nanomaterials to act as photoabsorbers, capable of selective heating, and the efficacy of laser based photothermal therapies as a whole as a potential cancer treatment, these studies overlook one of the main aspects of nanoparticle based laser treatments, the transport of the particles themselves in the tumor microenvironment.