Because of their biocompatibility and unique physical and optical properties — including the potential to make them radioactive — gold nanoparticles’ potential for novel diagnostic and therapeutic medical applications has created a research “gold rush.” Combined with pulsed power, the atomic-sized “nuggets” are half of a one-two punch in the brain cancer research of Paul Pevsner, M.D., and Angela Spurgeon, D.O., in MU’s College of Engineering.
Pevsner, a neurosurgeon-turned-researcher, is an adjunct associate professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department (ECE). Spurgeon is a fifth-year neurosurgical resident at MU working in Pevsner’s lab.
The physician-researchers are experimenting with electroporation, a process that uses electromagnetic pulses to open pores in cells of the blood-brain barrier. It holds promise for both detection and destruction of cancer cells.
“The blood-brain barrier,” said Spurgeon, “is very selective in what it lets into the brain. Our goal is to use electroporation to our advantage by opening the blood-brain barrier and allowing the immunolabeled radioactive nanoparticles to target brain tumor cells.
“A patient with a brain tumor would undergo a brain biopsy,” Spurgeon explained. “We would be able to identify the proteins specific to the tumor using mass spectrometry. Antibodies to these proteins would be prepared and attached to the nanoparticles, and these radioactive, immunolabeled, targeted nanoparticles would intravenously seek and kill the tumor.”
Pevsner, last fall’s featured lecturer for the Research Society of America’s annual Sigma Xi lecture at MU, told his audience that, for many years, it has been known electric pulses would open the double wall of the cell to admit proteins. But the idea to use label specific radioactive nanoparticles with electroporation had never been tested.
Reviewed 2016-03-17