The use of gold nanostructures in the imaging and therapy of cancer

Abstract

This thesis examines the use of gold nanostructures as an exogenous cancer-specific optical contrast agents for reflectance-based imaging to supplement the weak inherent contrast signal associated with disease pathology and improve the contrast between different tissue types involved in early-stage epithelial carcinogenesis. Here, the focus is on the development and application of gold nanoshells in cancer detection based on the expression of the Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor (EGFR) as a clinically relevant prognostic marker. The approach adopted includes developing and characterizing gold nanostructure probes, conducting in vitro assessment of their optical contrast, examing their optical properties in phantom models and evaluating their efficacy in animal models. Successful development of contrast enhancing gold nanostructure probes allows in vivo diagnostic imaging with increased sensitivity and specificity, resulting in early detection and management of pre-cancers through the combination of phenotypic markers and expression profiling of molecular markers using the gold nanostructure probes.