Surgical resection for cancer is becoming more minimally invasive with smaller incisions and less patient morbidity. However, this process switches the burden to the surgeon to remove all the disease with suboptimal visualization. This project proposes to develop a technique to employ pre- operative injection of ultra-sound contrast enhancement stationary microbubble and microshells to enable intraoperative detection of tumors even in cases with small skin incisions to allow surgeons to better identify and completely resect tumors and decease patient morbidty.
Aims : To determine the optimal dose and lifetime of stationary microbubbles in a rabbit model as an ultrasound contrast agent in order to localize small breast tumors for surgical resection. To study the localization ability of a novel gas filled silica microshells compared to microbubbles as an ultrasound contrast agent and localization method for occult breast cancers using a rabbit model.
Because surgical resection of small early cancers remains so important in local control and prevention of metastases, techniques to improve its efficacy in visualizing and removing tumors completely can have a major impact on breast and other cancer treatment. We believe that improving targeting of nonpalpable cancers is crucial. This fact is particularly important in this era in which tiny cancers are detected by imaging and more advanced techniques are needed for localizing tumors. This project may be able to decrease positive margins, local recurrence and possible cure of early stage cancers.
| Ward, Erin P; Wang, James; Mendez, Natalie et al. (2016) Utilization of iron (III)-doped nanoshells for in vivo marking of nonpalpable tumors using a VX2 rabbit model. Am J Surg 212:1140-1146 |
| Liberman, Alexander; Mendez, Natalie; Trogler, William C et al. (2014) Synthesis and surface functionalization of silica nanoparticles for nanomedicine. Surf Sci Rep 69:132-158 |
| Liberman, Alexander; Wu, Zhe; Barback, Christopher V et al. (2014) Hollow iron-silica nanoshells for enhanced high intensity focused ultrasound. J Surg Res 190:391-8 |
| Liberman, Alexander; Wu, Zhe; Barback, Christopher V et al. (2013) Color Doppler ultrasound and gamma imaging of intratumorally injected 500 nm iron-silica nanoshells. ACS Nano 7:6367-77 |
| Liberman, Alexander; Martinez, H Paul; Ta, Casey N et al. (2012) Hollow silica and silica-boron nano/microparticles for contrast-enhanced ultrasound to detect small tumors. Biomaterials 33:5124-9 |
