Targeted cancer treatment is worth its weight in gold

Gili Bisker, PhD student in nanotechnology at the Technion and laureate of the UNESCO-L'Oréal Prize for Women in Science develops during her PhD a method for the controlled release of a drug using gold nanoparticles and short laser pulses

One of the studies that demonstrates how multidisciplinary scientific work in the field of nanotechnology works, in this case at the Russell Berry Institute for Nanotechnology at the Technion, is the research of Gili Bisker, who develops
Her PhD is a new method for cancer treatment in the laboratory of Dr. Dvir Yelin.

Bisker is one of the winners of the UNESCO-L'Oréal Prize for Women in Science, and unlike the other two, she is still in the final stages of her doctoral thesis, and is now looking for a postdoctoral supervisor.
In a conversation with the science website, Bisker explains: "The method is based on the controlled release of drugs from gold nanoparticles using short laser pulses. What is good about the method is that it is possible to specifically damage the cancer cells without causing damage to the healthy cells."

"We used the special optical properties of gold nanoparticles that, in their interaction with the laser radiation, increase the intensity of the laser in their immediate environment. You can use the amplification effect to release molecules that were previously attached to the particles, and in addition, increasing the intensity of the laser also has a destructive effect on the cell membrane to which the particle is attached - cancer cell

"There is a double effect here, following the laser illumination, the increase in intensity near the particle directly damages the cell membrane and thus causes the cell to die, and at the same time the same illumination causes the release of the drug molecules that coat the particle and those molecules can mark additional cancer cells in the environment and signal the immune system to eliminate those marked cells by the drug molecule."

"The research was done as part of the inter-unit program for nanosciences and nanotechnology in the laboratory of Dr. Dvir Yelin, in collaboration with Dr. Daniela Yehezkali-Hayon and Dr. Limor Minai, and the research is a clear example of multidisciplinary research. We use the optics of lasers from the field of physics, from the field of chemistry we bring the process of producing particles and coating them with drug molecules, and of course we also deal with biology because in the end we work with cultures of cancer cells. " she concludes.