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Srivalleesha Mallidi wins Best Talk and Poster in nanotechnology
Srivalleesha Mallidi, a doctoral student in the Biomedical Engineering department, is the winner of Best Talk for the Portfolio Student Presentations Spring 2009 and Winner of Best Poster for Nano Night Spring 2009 for Molecular specific photoacoustic imaging and Selective Detection of Cancer Using Photoacoustic Imaging and Gold Nanoparticles. Her supervising professor is Stanislav Emelianov.
Abstract: Cancer has become one of the leading causes of death for today. The early detection of cancer is absolutely necessary to decrease the mortality rate and also to obtain effective therapeutic outcome. Advances in materials science have enabled the use of nanoparticles for added contrast in various imaging techniques. More recently there has been much interest in the use of gold nanoparticles as optical contrast agents because of their strong absorption and scattering properties at visible and near-infrared wavelengths. Highly proliferative cancer cells over express molecular markers such as epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR). When specifically targeted gold nanoparticles bind to EGFR they tend to cluster leading to an optical red-shift of the plasmon resonances and an increase in absorption in the red region. These changes in optical properties provide the opportunity for photoacoustic imaging technique (contrast mechanism is based on the optical absorption properties of the tissue constituents) to differentiate cancer cells from surrounding benign cells. Studies were performed on 3-D tissue models and in-vivo murine tumor models to evaluate the feasibility of molecular specific photoacoustic imaging technique. The results indicate
that highly sensitive and selective detection of cancer cells can be achieved utilizing the plasmon resonance coupling effect of EGFR targeted gold nanoparticles and multi-wavelength photoacoustic imaging.
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