Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the United States, next only to heart disease. More effective diagnostic and therapeutic strategies are in urgent need for better management of patients with cancers. While single inorganic nanoparticles (NPs) are attractive for this application, the self-assembly of NPs can yield materials with new or advanced properties that are different from their individuals. For example, the organization of Au NPs allows for tuning the absorption of NP ensembles in the near-infrared (NIR) window which is highly desired for in vivo biomedical imaging and delivery. The clustering of magnetic NPs within micelles dramatically increases the magnetic resonance (MR) imaging contrast and responsiveness to external magnetic field. It is, therefore, expected that the ability to design assembled structures with tailored spatial arrangement of NPs may facilitate the utilization of inorganic NPs in combating cancers. In this talk, I will present our efforts to develop new strategies for the self-assembly of polymer-functionalized inorganic NPs into functional hybrid materials and to evaluate the hybrid assemblies for cancer imaging and treatment. Specifically, I will introduce i) the molecular or atomic mimicking assembly of gold and magnetic NPs into a diverse range of complex nanoarchitectures; and ii) the utilization of hybrid assemblies, particularly vesicular structures containing gold NPs, magnetic NPs or both for effective multimodality cancer imaging (i.e., photothermal, photoacoustic, and MR imaging) and combinational cancer therapy (i.e., photothermal ablation of tumor, photodynamic therapy, and targeted delivery-based chemotherapy).

Responsive inorganic nanoparticle assemblies for cancer imaging and therapy

254th National Meeting (2017)

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