Abstract
This thesis reports novel applications of NPs to detect cancer cell lines and measure drug delivery using a new molecular imaging modality, spectral photon-counting CT. The long-term goals of this research are to evaluate tumour response to treatment and facilitate anticancer drug development.
Personalizing cancer treatment could make a considerable difference to reducing treatment related morbidity and improving survival. To achieve my aim, I needed to test NPs and high-Z materials and test scanning protocols to detect and measure them. These types of NPs and high-Z materials can be employed as agents to enhance X-ray contrast, measure the response to treatment, or measure drug delivery.
In this study, I assessed the effect of NP size in the detection of different ovarian cancer cell lines. Furthermore, I designed the study to evaluate angiogenesis in a tumour mouse model. The important question which I investigate in this survey is, how can the spectral CT be used to enable personalizing strategies for tumour treatment. Also, in another investigation, I used gold nanoparticles labeled to different cancer biomarkers including LHRH, Rituximab, and Herceptin to target the Ovarian, Raji, and SK-BR3 cancer cell lines respectively. I describe the detection of functionalized AuNPs in different cell lines. This leads on to detection and measurement of drug delivery to live cancer cells, a novel finding which fulfills one of the potential advantages of SPCCT.
In conclusion, this thesis establishes the methodology for using a photon-counting detector that has the potential to enable the imaging and quantification of tissue components, biomarker labels, and pharmaceuticals in order to monitor biological or disease processes and drug delivery to specific cell types.