Magnetic Nanoparticles Based Therapeutics for Breast Cancer
Cancer is one of the major causes of death worldwide, accounting for around 7.9 million deaths in 2008. In the US alone, it is estimated that direct medical costs for cancer patients approach $100B yearly.
Magnetic hyperthermia is a promising approach toward improving cancer therapeutics. In this approach, heat dissipated from superparamagnetic nanoparticles in an alternating magnetic field (AMF) can be used to locally raise the temperature by 5°C or more above the physiological temperature (37°C) in targeted tumor tissues, thereby encouraging either cell damage or death. Alternatively, hyperthermia can be used in conjunction with conventional chemotherapy and radiation approaches to enhance their respective efficacies. When the accumulated magnetic nanoparticles (MNP) are exposed to a large alternating magnetic field, they begin to rotate due to magnetic torque. Simultaneously, the direction of the magnetic moment in each nanoparticle reverses with a certain probability. Consequently, heat equivalent to the magnetic loss dissipates locally in the tumor tissue. The actual rotations of the MNPs are disordered because the microviscosity of the local environment in cancer cells is not constant and effective elasticity depends on the binding conditions between MNPs and membranes. Since assembly of singledomain particles with uniaxial anisotropy and magnetic dipole-dipole interaction can be tuned by adjusting the size, shape, and the magnetization of the particles, this seed project investigates the effect of shape and size of MNPs in complex microenvironment of cancer cells and the heat generated under alternating current.
Our specific aims are:
1. Development of MNP based delivery vehicle containing HER2 antibody using varying shaped and size of iron oxide mesoporous nanoassemblies
2. In vitro evaluation of HER2 targeting and therapeutic potentials of MNP vehicle in HER overexpressing cancer cells
3. Evaluation of MNP delivery vehicle for hypertermia treatment of HER2 positive cancer cells
