Development of Targeted Cancer Hyperthermia Technique

We are looking for a PhD student to join a research project on investigating the novel ideas of using cell hyperthermia for cancer treatment.

Cell hyperthermia is a promising approach to the treatment of cancer. Through heating tumour tissue to a temperature of 40–43 °C , the cells will suffer a series of thermally induced metabolic events including apoptosis. When hyperthermia is designed properly, it potentially has no unpleasant side-effects associated with treatments such as chemotherapy or radiotherapy. Traditional hyperthermia methods include whole body hyperthermia, and local hyperthermia using high energy waves aimed at a tumour near the body surface from a machine outside the body or using a thin needle or probe injected into the tumour to release energy and heat the tissue around it. The common problems associated with this treatment is the difficulty to control temperature in the tumour site and surrounding tissues, and this has largely impeded the wide use of hyperthermia in cancer treatment.

In this research project, the PhD student will develop an advanced modelling method to investigate the heat conduction with different tissue and organ types, and use a testing rig to investigate magnetic induced hyperthermia technique using Nanoparticles, thus to provide methods to assist the decision making by clinicians.