A UT Arlington physics professor has received funding from the U.S. Department of Defense to develop therapy for use against breast and prostate cancers.
The professor, Wei Chen, is also using these particles to create a hybrid nanomaterial that can convert light and thermal energy into electrical current, which can surpass methods that used either light or thermal energy, but not both.
Chen’s funding is to develop nanoparticle self-lighting photodynamic therapy for use against the aforementioned cancers after, in 2010, he was the first to publish results in the journal Nanomedicine that said near infrared light could be used to heat copper sulfide nanoparticles for photothermal therapy in cancer treatment, destroying cancer cells with heat between 41 and 45 degrees Celsius.
Next month, the Journal of Biomedical Nanotechnology will publish Chen’s work successfully coupling gold nanoparticles with the copper sulfide nanoparticles for the photothermal therapy. Such a material would be less costly and potentially more effective than using gold particles alone, Chen said. The new paper is called “Local field enhanced Au/CuS nanocomposites as efficient photothermal transducer agents for cancer treatment.”
