URI_Research_Magazine_Momentum_Fall_2015_Melissa-McCarthy

The University motto is ‘Think Big’ but we are thinking small

written by Chris Barrett ‘08

enter into tumors and powerful lasers hit them in a process called photothermal ablation therapy. The lasers stimulate the gold nanoparticles that heat up when “excited” and destroy the tumors, but the gold nanoparticles stay in the body. Lu’s studies show that they remain for at least three months. Other studies indicate that they may persist in the body for a year or more. Lu wants to develop a better particle that the body can excrete faster. When he arrived at URI in 2010, he and a URI undergraduate pharmaceutical sciences student, Kimberly Gaboriault, started testing different materials. An undergraduate student, Samy Ramadan, from Roger Williams University also joined Lu’s lab through participating in summer research, sponsored by the Rhode Island IDeA Network for Excellence in Biomedical Research hosted at URI. When Ramadan called with some intriguing results, Lu headed to the University’s transmission electron microscope. Clustered around the equipment, Lu and the student realized they discovered the right material: copper. Made famous by the penny, but rarely associated by the public with cancer treatment, copper contains just the

Wei Lu discovered a passion for nanoparticles when he enrolled in pharmacy school, which may just lead to a new cancer treatment. As an associate professor at the University of Rhode Island (URI), he’s using copper nanoparticles to help destroy cancerous tumors. “The University motto is ‘Think Big,’ but we are thinking small,” he says. “It’s a different direction, but we think the small things can really improve people’s lives.” There is no disputing Lu’s big impact with his nanoparticles smaller than 1/1,000 the width of a human hair. He received a $1.3 million grant from the National Institutes of Health in late 2013. Impressive by most definitions, the award was especially notable because junior faculty members like Lu rarely command such big grants. Now two years into the four-year project, Lu has published two research articles in the leading journal American Chemical Society (ACS) Nano and charted a path to a new way to attack tumors. In today’s clinical trials, doctors infuse gold nanoparticles into blood circulation. The nanoparticles

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