Current Methods to Develop and Investigate Nanomaterials for Cancer Phototherapy

TOPICAL COLLECTIONS

Guest Editor

Santhosh Kalash Rajendrakumar

University of Warwick, Department of Chemistry, Coventry, UK

Dr. Santhosh Kalash Rajendrakumar is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry at University of Warwick (UoW). He completed his B.Tech. in Biotechnology at Arunai Engineering College (affiliated to Anna University) and received M.Tech. in Molecular Medicine at Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham University, India in 2013. He completed his PhD in Biomedical Sciences sponsored by Brain Korea 21 (BK21) at the Chonnam National University, South Korea in 2019. After finishing his postdoctoral research at Brigham and women’s hospital and Tufts University, he joined as an Assistant Professor at UoW. Currently, Dr. Kalash is working on developing polymeric nanoparticles for the delivery of nucleic acids, proteins, and small molecules, majorly focusing on immunological approach to treat cancer and inflammatory diseases. He has published over 19 research articles in peer-reviewed journals like Journal of Controlled, ACS nano letters, Biomacromolecules, Advanced Healthcare Materials, with an H index of 10 and over 200 citations.

Collection Overview

Conventional cancer therapies such as radiation, surgery, and chemotherapy have demonstrated effectiveness in eradicating tumor tissues. However, it is accompanied with adverse side effects and risk of tumor recurrence in patients. Near infrared (NIR)-based phototherapies such as Photothermal (PTT) and photodynamic (PDT) therapy for cancer have an incomparable advantage over the conventional treatments in precisely eradicating unresectable tumors without affecting healthy tissues. Furthermore, the approach is minimally invasive and maximal tumor eradication can be achieved by locally irradiating the tumor using NIR laser. The generation of heat or reactive oxygen species to kill the cancer cells are dictated by the concentration of photosensitizer accumulated in the tumor. Nanomaterial-based photosensitizers offers a possible to enhance the phototherapy by specifically targeting and accumulating in the tumor region. The objective of this Methods Collection is to share optimized protocols for synthesis, characterization, and explore the application of nanomaterial-based photosensitizers for cancer phototherapy.