Skip to main content
An official website of the United States government
Email

Masimo Corporation — Mechanical Drugs: Harnessing Cancer Aggressiveness to Overcome Its Resistance

Principal Investigators: Dmitri Lapotko, Ph.D., and Mien-Chie Hung, Ph.D.

Co-Investigators: Ann Gillenwater, M.D., Lie Nie, M.D., Vladimir Torchilin, Ph.D., and Jack Phan, M.D., Ph.D.

Project Summary

The goal of this project is to develop a new therapeutic approach to triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) which is based on intracellular mechanical impact generated by plasmonic nanobubbles. The latter are non-stationary vapor bubbles produced around intracellular gold nanoparticle clusters upon their exposure to a short laser pulse. Following absorption of a laser pulse, a gold cluster instantaneously converts optical energy into localized heat and then vapor, generating mechanical impact and killing the host cell. In this project, gold nanoparticles will be co-administered with liposome-encapsulated drugs and/or radiotherapy to assess the synergy among the three modalities: 1) mechanical impact, 2) chemotherapy aided by drug release from nanobubble-disrupted liposomes, and 3) radiation, which will be enhanced due to the presence of gold nanoclusters. EGFR targeting of nanoparticles will enable accumulation of larger gold clusters in EGFR-expressing cancer cells. This, in turn, will lead to a lower plasmonic bubble generation threshold and higher selectivity of the treatment, so a low-energy laser pulse will be sufficient to kill cancer cells while sparing normal cells.

Project Expertise

The project team includes expertise in nanomaterials, bio/chemistry, physics, surgery, radiation oncology, and molecular / cell / cancer biology.

  • Posted:

If you would like to reproduce some or all of this content, see Reuse of NCI Information for guidance about copyright and permissions. In the case of permitted digital reproduction, please credit the National Cancer Institute as the source and link to the original NCI product using the original product's title; e.g., “Masimo Corporation — Mechanical Drugs: Harnessing Cancer Aggressiveness to Overcome Its Resistance was originally published by the National Cancer Institute.”

Email