Plasmonic Nanobubbles: From Physics to Medicine

Despite the progress in science and medicine, there are diseases, ranging from cancer to malaria and other infectious diseases, where the standards of care fail even in the best clinics. This is where new physical and biological mechanisms can support novel groundbreaking medical technologies to create safe and powerful diagnostics, surgery, and therapy of the future.

This book focuses on an interdisciplinary approach using physics, nanotechnology, lasers, and biology to develop cell-level on-demand non-invasive and minimally invasive diagnostics and treatment. The laser pulsenanoparticletissue interaction results in transient vapor nanobubble, on-demand explosions at the nanoscale. These events, termed optothermal bubbles and plasmonic nanobubbles, represent a new physical phenomenon with rich biomedical functionality at the cellular and molecular levels: instant diagnostics, intracellular drug release, selective delivery and chemotherapy and genetic cargo to target cells, selective guided mechanical destruction of bad actor cells, minimally invasive surgery and theranostics which unites diagnosis, treatment, and monitoring in one safe connected real-time procedure. The plasmonic/photothermal nanobubble platform can support early diagnostics, mass screening, in vivo biopsy, minimally invasive surgery, and low-dose combination treatments, including gene and cell therapy and chemoradiation therapy, especially in the areas where current standards of care and other investigational methods cannot provide the sensitivity, speed, safety and therapeutic efficacy our platform delivers. The book includes basic physical mechanisms and methods, biological mechanisms and methods, and multiple experimental examples of preclinical and clinical validation of plasmonic nanobubbles. Their instant and quantitative nature, and design solution can support manual applications as well as automated medical technologies. Coupling plasmonic nanobubbles instant signals for diagnosis and mechanical impact for treatment with artificial intelligence and medical or surgical robotics would result in safe and efficient medical tools of the future. Therefore, this book is of interest to a broad audience, including scientists, engineers, doctors, and those working in academia, industry, and clinics.