Toward carbon-nanotube-based theranostic agents for microwave detection and treatment of breast cancer: Enhanced dielectric and heating response of tissue-mimicking materials

Alireza Mashal*, Balaji Sitharaman, Xu Li, Pramod K. Avti, Alan V. Sahakian, John H. Booske, Susan C. Hagness

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

137 Scopus citations

Abstract

The experimental results reported in this paper suggest that single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) have the potential to enhance dielectric contrast between malignant and normal tissue for microwave detection of breast cancer and facilitate selective heating of malignant tissue for microwave hyperthermia treatment of breast cancer. In this study, we constructed tissue-mimicking materials with varying concentrations of SWCNTs and characterized their dielectric properties and heating response. At SWCNT concentrations of less than 0.5% by weight, we observed significant increases in the relative permittivity and effective conductivity. In microwave heating experiments, we observed significantly greater temperature increases in mixtures containing SWCNTs. These temperature increases scaled linearly with the effective conductivity of the mixtures. This work is a first step towards the development of functionalized, tumor-targeting SWCNTs as theranostic (integrated therapeutic and diagnostic) agents for microwave breast cancer detection and treatment.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number5416291
Pages (from-to)1831-1834
Number of pages4
JournalIEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering
Volume57
Issue number8
DOIs
StatePublished - Aug 2010

Funding

Manuscript received December 22, 2009; revised January 24, 2010; accepted January 31, 2010. Date of publication February 18, 2010; date of current version July 14, 2010. This work was supported by the Department of Defense Breast Cancer Research Program under Grant W81XWH-07-1-0629, by the National Institutes of Health under Grant R01CA112398 awarded by the National Cancer Institute, and by the Carol M. Baldwin Breast Cancer Research Fund. Asterisk indicates corresponding author.

Keywords

  • Breast cancer
  • carbon nanotubes
  • contrast agent
  • dielectric spectroscopy
  • microwave hyperthermia
  • microwave imaging
  • phantoms

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Biomedical Engineering

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