Gold Nanotechnology for Targeted Diagnosis, Nanotherapy Treatment and In-situ Monitoring of Photothermal Therapy Response of Cancer Cells and Drug Resistance Bacteria

Cancer and multiple drug resistance bacteria (MDRB) remain the greatest challenges in public health care in today’s world. Prostate cancer is the most common malignancy among American men and it is the second leading cause of cancer-related death among the American male population and cost of treating prostate cancer patients can be $10 billion/year in the US. On the other hand, breast cancer is the most common cancer among women and it is the second leading cause of cancer deaths in women today, after lung cancer. The key to the effective and ultimately successful treatment of diseases such as cancer is an early, accurate diagnosis and targeted therapy. Current treatment including surgery, radiation therapy, and chemotherapy are mostly ineffective against advanced stage prostate cancer disease and also it is often associated with severe side effects. As a result, new approaches to treat prostate and breast cancer that do not rely on traditional therapeutic regimes, is very urgent for public health as well as world economy. Here we will discuss our recent report on Gold nanotechnology driven approach for targeted sensing and hyperthermic destruction of cancer cells and drug resistance bacteria. We have shown that our gold nanotechnology driven approach can recognize human cancer cell and MDRB bacteria in 50 cells level. Our results indicate that the localized heating that occurs during NIR irradiation is able to cause irreparable cellular damage of prostate cancer cell. Our in-situ time dependent results demostrated for the first time that by monitoring SERS intensity change, one can monitor photo thermal nanotherapy response during therapy process. Possible mechanism and operating principle of our SERS assay have been discussed. Ultimately, our nanotechnology driven assay could have enormous potential applications in rapid, on-site targeted sensing, nanotherapy treatment and monitoring of nanotherapy process which is critical to providing effective treatment of cancer disease.