STTR Phase I: Multifunctional Nanoparticle Assemblies for Optical Diagnosis and Treatment of Disease

该奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案（公法111-5）资助的。这个小企业技术转让（STTR）第一阶段项目将开发一种新的多功能纳米粒子组件，用于光学疾病的诊断和治疗。纳米粒子组装体将使用新的等离子体增强双光子激活交联方法合成，该方法将以前所未有的选择性水平连接纳米粒子到特定的纳米粒子位点。通过掺入有机发色团，金属纳米颗粒的等离子体共振将在二次谐波成像显微镜和双光子激发荧光显微镜的效率方面提供三到六个数量级的增强，这将用于成像疾病状态的位置，例如体内的癌性肿瘤。增加的激光强度与等离子体热点的能量集中到小的空间体积中相结合，将使得能够通过局部温度的大幅增加来进行疾病的高热治疗。这项研究的更广泛影响包括加速诊断和治疗癌症等疾病的光学技术的发展。虽然这种光学技术正在进行密集的研究和开发，以实现在生物医学中，数量级的效率增加所提供的新的纳米粒子组件在这里提出的将使更快速的实施。此外，合成纳米颗粒组装体的新方法将具有更广泛的科学和商业影响。组装方法仅要求纳米颗粒之一是金属的。因此，这种新的组装方法的发展将使广泛的功能，包括磁性纳米粒子，抗菌银纳米粒子和荧光量子点的组合。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).This Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase I project will develop a new class of multifunctional nanoparticle assemblies for optical disease diagnosis and treatment. The nanoparticle assemblies will be synthesized using a new plasmon-enhanced two-photon activated crosslinking approach that will attach nanoparticles with an unprecedented level of selectivity towards specific nanoparticle sites. Through incorporation of organic chromophores, the plasmonic resonances of the metallic nanoparticles will provide three to six orders of magnitude enhancement in the efficiency of second harmonic imaging microscopy and two-photon excitation fluorescence microscopy, which will be utilized for imaging the locations of disease states such as cancerous tumors within the body. Increased laser intensity combined with the energy concentration of the plasmonic hotspots into small spatial volumes will enable hyperthermal treatment of the disease through large increases in the local temperature. The broader impacts of this research include acceleration of the development of optical techniques for diagnosis and treatment of diseases such as cancer. While such optical techniques are under intense research and development for implementation in biomedicine, the orders of magnitude increases in efficiency provided by the new nanoparticle assemblies proposed here will enable more rapid implementation. Furthermore, the novel approach for synthesis of nanoparticle assemblies will have a much broader scientific and commercial impact. The assembly method only requires that one of the nanoparticles be metallic. The development of this new assembly approach will thus enable the combination of a wide range functionalities including magnetic nanoparticles, antimicrobial silver nanoparticles, and fluorescent quantum dots.