Title:

“Applications of Gold Nanoparticles in Radiation Oncology ”

Speaker:

Dr. Sang Hyun Cho

Affiliation:

Nuclear/Radiological Engineering & Medical Physics

When:

Thursday, November 8, 2012 at 11:00:00 AM   Add to Calendar

Where:

Boggs Building, Room 3-47

Host:

Dr. Cho
scho@gatech.edu
404-385-1301

Abstract

Gold nanoparticles (GNPs) can be fabricated in various shapes and sizes from an inert metal, gold, which has a long history of medical uses without any noticeable toxicity. When accumulated either passively or actively within tumors, GNPs can alter the interaction probability of tumors with ionizing radiation due to the high atomic number of gold. They can also affect the locations of radiation interaction and energy deposition within tumors depending on the tumor targeting strategy. Additionally, tumors loaded with optically-tunable GNPs can be heated up to a certain temperature using external light sources via the physical mechanisms known as plasmon resonance and photothermal effect. All of these properties have provided some unique strategies to modulate the radiation response of tumors and perform molecular imaging of cancers using GNPs. This seminar will provide an overview of various GNP-based applications in radiation oncology currently under development.

Biography

Sang Hyun Cho is currently an Associate Professor of Medical Physics at Georgia Tech. He is a certified medical physicist in therapeutic radiologic physics by the American Board of Radiology and a licensed medical physicist in the same specialty by the State of Texas. His recent research has been focused on the use of various nanoparticles, especially gold nanoparticles, for cancer therapy and detection.