Development of the novel approaches to diagnose and treat head and neck cancer using nanotechnology

众所周知，生长肿瘤的血管生成过程促进了血管密度的增加和结构的异常。头颈部癌的淋巴转移在转移活跃期也表现出这种新生血管的特征。本研究的目的是利用微泡作为超声造影剂来评价转移淋巴结的血管密度和形态。在下一阶段，我们打算使用杂化纳米泡泡来引入一些抗肿瘤药物或将构建物转化为癌细胞作为药物输送系统。我们开发了新的图像分析软件来分析患者淋巴结中的毛细血管。行颈清扫术后，所有淋巴结增强的患者经组织病理学检查均有淋巴结癌转移。应用本软件的声学造影剂可用于检测头颈部肿瘤的淋巴结转移。

It is well known that angiogenic processes in growing tumors promote increased vessel density and structural abnormalities. Lymph node metastasis of the head and neck cancer also showed this neo-vascularization features in active phase of metastasis. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the vascular density and morphology in metastatic lymph nodes by using microbubbles as ultrasound contrast-enhancing agent. On the next stage, we intend to use hybrid nanobubbles to introduce some anti-tumor agents or transformed constructs into cancer cells as drug delivery system. We developed novel image-analyzing software to analyze capillary vessels in lymph nodes of the patients. After they underwent neck dissection, all of the patients who showed contrast-enhancement in their lymph nodes had carcinoma metastases in their lymph nodes by histopathological examination. Contrast ultrasound using our software is useful to detect lymph node metastasis of the head and neck cancer.