About the Project
Cancer is still a leading cause of disease worldwide. Magnetic nanoparticles offers an exciting new alternative treatment, with local heating of affected areas allows to eliminate the side effect of current radio-or chemotherapy. Magnetic heating can also help to reduce the tumor size to allow surgery, otherwise impossible in certain cases.
The most cutting edge research has recently focused on the combination of heat treatment with traditional cancer drugs. That synergistic effect will enhance the treatment efficacy of both components compared to single mode of treatments.
The bottle-neck is still the biofunctionalization of magnetic nanoparticle that can be use for clinical treatment.
In this project, the students will conjugate different biocompatible ligands with magnetic nanoparticles and testing their magnetic hyperthermia using the most cutting edge technology of hyperthermia measurement to assess the efficiency heating of nanoparticles in the solution and when loading in cancer cells.
Later stage, the combination of the best hypethermia mangetic nanoparticles and cancer drugs will also be investigated using flow cytometry and live cell imaging with insitu magnetic hyperthermia equipment.
The synthesised high magnetic moment NPs will be characterised using DLS (Dynamic light scattering), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) for size, shape and monodispersity of nanomaterials, thereby enabling the determination of the successful synthesis. X-Ray diffraction (XRD) will also be used at later stage to characterise further the structure of materials, and Superconducting QUantum Interference Devices (SQUID magnetometer).
The magnetic hyperthermia will be using nBnanoscale system mamchine. The ligand conjugation will be investigated using FTIR and TGA.
The student needs to have strong back ground in chemical thesis, bioconjugation of nanoparticles with a strong interest in cancer and biological cellular work.
Applications will be accepted until the deadline but the position will be filled as soon as an appropriate candidate is found. So please send your CV with detailed marks for high school, BSc and MSc as soon as possible. Due to large number of applications, only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.
Funding Notes
Please email Prof Thanh ([Email Address Removed]) with project title in the subject of your email to send your CV with detailed marks of all University courses taken immediately if you are interested.
Due to large number of applicants only short listed students will be contacted.
See more on Prof Thanh research at http://www.ntk-thanh.co.uk
References
1. Blanco-Andujar, C., Southern, P., Ortega, D., Nesbitt, S.A., Pankhurst, Q.A., Thanh, N.T.K.* (2015) High performance multi-core iron oxide nanoparticles for magnetic hyperthermia: microwave synthesis, and the role of core-to-core interactions. Nanoscale.. 7: 1768-1775. Gold Open Access.
2. R. Hachani, M. Lowdell, M. Birchall, A. Hervault, D. Merts, S. Begin-Colin, N.T.K. Thanh*. (2016) Polyol synthesis, functionalisation, and biocompatibility studies of superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles for potential MRI contrast agents. Nanoscale. 8: 3278-3287. Highly cited paper. Gold Open Access.
3. C. Blanco-Andujar, P. Southern, D. Ortega, S.A. Nesbitt, Q.A., Pankhurst and N. T. K. Than*. (2016) Real -time tracking of delayed-onset cellular apoptosis induce d by intracellular magnetic hyperthermia. Nanomedicine. 11: 121-136. Gold Open Access.
4. Hervault and N. T. K. Thanh, “Magnetic nanoparticle-based therapeutic agents for thermo-chemotherapy treatment of cancer,” Nanoscale, vol. 6, no. 20, pp. 11553–11573, 2014. Gold Open Access. Front cover.
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