New frontiers for hyperthermia-based therapies
Project Director: Dr. Andrei KUNCSER
Enhancing the Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) of magnetic structures is essential for the development of promising hyperthermia-based cancer therapies with magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs), currently still under clinical trials. Depending on the involved heat transfer mechanism, superparamagnetic relaxation time as well as the coercivity of MNPs can be conveniently used for SAR tuning.
Up today, it has been demonstrated that the two parameters do not depend only on the type of MNP but are affected also by inter-particle interactions (theoretical framework developed by the proposer).
The present project aims to find new ways for tuning SAR, via the above mentioned parameters, by a suitable long-range organization of magnetite MNPs (e.g. MNPs grouped in circles, ellipsoids, spheres, rectangles etc). It is estimated that successful implementation of the project will boost the future development of hyperthermia-based cancer treatments. Moreover, computational methods and experimental methodology developed during the project will be essential in any field involving morphological characterization of nanoparticles.
The project has two main components:
1. development of new methods for morpho-structural data analysis involving electron microscopy and micromagnetic simulations, backed up by in-house designed software.
2. indicating new ways for a fine tuning of the heat transfer mechanisms of MNPs via morpho-structural and organization/configuration aspects.
Dr. Andrei Kuncser (BrainMap: U-1700-032N-6988), project leader, is 31 years old and researcher
rank 3 in NIMP. His scientific activity is focused on morpho-structural and magnetic
characterization of nanomaterials (see CV). He is co-author to more than 90 ISI papers (in total 322 citations),
2 book chapters, 2 patents, has a h-index of 14.
Dr. Cristian Radu (U-1800-055H-8123) is PhD candidate since 2019 at Faculty of Physics,
University of Bucharest and is 28 years old. His thesis "Using electron microscopy techniques for
the study of ferroelectric materials" involves the characterization of nanomaterials by a wide range
of transmission electron microscopy (TEM) techniques.
Dr. Ioana Dorina Vlaicu (BrainMap: U-1700-037A-2366) is 35 years old, she is Researcher Rank
II and she has an experience of more than 10 years in scientific research. She obtained her PhD
title in Chemistry in 2014. Her main research activities are in the Materials Science domain, in
particular in Synthetic Chemistry. She has a portfolio of more than 20 ISI papers of which she is the main
author in 11 of them and they are all in the field of nanomaterials synthesis. She is
expert in obtaining, by co-precipitation method, metal oxides nanoparticles (ZnO, TiO2, SnO2,
Fe3O4) with different size and morphology, for different applications like photocatalysis,
hyperthermia, magnetism and gas-sensing.
Dr. Nicusor Iacob (U-1700-030K-6075) is 44 years old and works as scientific researcher rank 3
at NIMP. He received the PhD in Physics in 2015 at University of Bucharest/Faculty of Physics.
During his activity at NIMP in the field of magnetism, dr. Iacob has acquired expertise in the
processing of magnetic nanostructures and handling of magnetometry techniques (SQUID, VSM)
and Mossbauer Spectroscopy. His research interest is main focused on theoretical and
experimental study of magnetic nanoparticles systems with applicability in magnetic fluid
hyperthermia.
The article "A new method for obtaining the magnetic shape anisotropy directly from electron tomography images" has been published in Beilstein Journal of Nanotechnology
The submission of the patent "Instalatie automatizata pentru mentinerea in atmosfera controlata a materialelor de investigat prin MIcroscopie Electronica de Transmissie" has been completed.
Magn3t software has been uploaded to https://github.com/rdcrs/magn3t
Results have been presented @ JEMS 2023 (oral presentation-A.Kuncser)
Results have been presented @ CREMS 2023 (oral presentation-A.Kuncser)
A1.1. A system of Fe3O4 magnetic nanoparticles (MNP) with mean size of 28 nm has been prepared
A1.2.Tomograms, Crystallographic orientation maps, electron microscopy images, X-ray spectra and chemical mappings have been obtained on the MNP system previously obtained.
A1.3. A set of algorithms has been compiled into a software for 3D analysis (Magn3t) and published on github (https://github.com/rdcrs/magn3t)
A2.1. Complex magnetic measurements have been performed on previously obtained Fe3O4 system
A2.2. A complex software for the manipulation of OOMMF time dependent simulations has been developed in Python
"A new method for obtaining the magnetic shape anisotropy directly from electron tomography images" , Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2022, 13, 590–598, https://doi.org/10.3762/bjnano.13.51
Nanomaterials. 2022, 12, 2511, https://doi.org/10.3390/nano12142511
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