RADIOLUMINESCENT NANOPARTICLES FOR MULTIMODAL CANCER TREATMENT

Conventional clinical therapies for head and neck squamous cell carcinomas (HNSCC) include surgical resection, chemotherapy (CT), and radiotherapy (RT). For locally advanced HNSCC, the CT-RT combination (“chemoradiation”) has been shown to be more effective than CT or RT alone and is the current standard of care. A novel radiation-controlled drug release nanoparticle formulation has been developed to realize the maximum benefits of intratumoral CT-RT. Under the application of low-dose X-ray, the formulation is capable of releasing PTX and providing localized, controlled, and sustained drug release for improvements in therapeutic efficacies.