Using Gold Nanoparticles to Enhance Cold Plasma Therapy
Currently I am working with a team consisting of one PhD student in Mechanical Engineering and a Nuerosurgical Resident at the George Washington University Medical Center on culturing U87 cancer lines and studying the gold nanopartical (AuNP) interactions of plasma with the cancer cells.Gold nanoparticles have garnered great interest in the field of medicine, since they have shown to be an important modality in numerous therapies including drug delivery, radiotherapy enhancement and laser therapy enhancement. It is most interesting in cancer therapies, since these gold nanoparticles can be specifically created to selectively adhere to cancer cells/tissue using special ligands.
The goal of these experiments is to see if cold atmospheric plasma therapy can be selectively enhanced to treat cancer cells using AuNP. The hypothesis is that the AuNPs will selectively adhere to the cancer cells, and subsequently increase the magnitude of the "biological plasma dose", creating an increase in cell death for the cancer cells. So far, results have been promising and measured trends indicate interesting conclusions. A paper detailing these results is up for publication (2014).