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Nanomedical Treatments for Cancer: Breakthroughs and Challenges

Description

The purpose of this project is to analyze the current state of cancer nanomedicine and its challenges. Cancer is the second most deadly illness in the United States after heart disease. Nanomedicine, the use of materials between 1 and 100 nm to for the purpose of addressing healthcare-related problems, is particularly suited for treating it since nanoparticles have properties such as high surface area-to-volume ratios and favorable drug release profiles that make them more suitable for tasks such as consistent drug delivery to tumor tissue. The questions posed are: What are the current nanomedical treatments for cancer? What are the technical, social, and legal challenges related to nanomedical treatments and how can they be overcome? To answer the questions mentioned above, information from several scientific papers on nanomedical treatments for cancer as well as from social science journals was synthesized. Based on the findings, nanomedicine has a wide range of applications for cancer drug delivery, detection, and immunotherapy. The main technical challenge related to nanomedical treatments is navigating through biological barriers such as the mononuclear phagocyte system, the kidney, the blood-brain barrier, and the tumor microenvironment. Current approaches to meeting this challenge include altering the size, shape, and charge of nanoparticles for easier passage. The main social and legal challenge related to nanomedical treatments is the difficulty of regulating them due to factors such as the near impossibility of detecting nanowaste. Current approaches to meeting this challenge include the use of techniques such as scanning tunneling microscopy and atomic force microscopy to help distinguish nanowaste from the surroundings. More research will have to be done in these and other areas to enhance a major cancer-fighting tool.

ContributorsAbraham, Alfred Francy (Author) / Brian, Jennifer (Thesis director) / Liu, Yan (Committee member) / Materials Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)

Created2021-05

Applications of Magnetic Resonance Cytography: Assessing Underlying Cytoarchitecture

Description

In medical imaging, a wide variety of methods are used to interrogate structural and physiological differences between soft tissues. One of the most ubiquitous methods in clinical practice is Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), which has the advantage of limited invasiveness, soft tissue discrimination, and adequate volumetric resolution. A myriad of advanced MRI methods exists to investigate the microstructural, physiologic and metabolic characteristics of tissue. For example, Dynamic Contrast Enhanced (DCE) and Dynamic Susceptibility Contrast (DSC) MRI non-invasively interrogates the dynamic passage of an exogenously administered MRI contrast agent through tissue to quantify local tracer kinetic properties like blood flow, vascular permeability and tissue compartmental volume fractions. Recently, an improved understanding of the biophysical basis of DSC-MRI signals in brain tumors revealed a new approach to derive multiple quantitative biomarkers that identify intrinsic sub-voxel cellular and vascular microstructure that can be used differentiate tumor sub-types. One of these characteristic biomarkers called Transverse Relaxivity at Tracer Equilibrium (TRATE), utilizes a combination of DCE and DSC techniques to compute a steady-state metric which is particularly sensitive to cell size, density, and packing properties. This work seeks to investigate the sensitivity and potential utility of TRATE in a range of disease states including Glioblastomas, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), and Duchenne’s Muscular Dystrophy (DMD). The MRC measures of TRATE showed the most promise in mouse models of ALS where TRATE values decreased with disease progression, a finding that correlated with reductions in myofiber size and area, as quantified by immunohistochemistry. In the animal models of cancer and DMD, TRATE results were more inconclusive, due to marked heterogeneity across animals and treatment state. Overall, TRATE seems to be a promising new biomarker but still needs further methodological refinement due to its sensitivity to contrast to noise and further characterization owing to its non-specificity with respect to multiple cellular features (e.g. size, density, heterogeneity) that complicate interpretation.

ContributorsFuentes, Alberto (Author) / Quarles, Chad C (Thesis advisor) / Kodibagkar, Vikram (Thesis advisor) / Greger, Bradley (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)

Created2018