In vitro photothermal destruction of cancer cells using gold nanorods and pulsed-train near-infrared laser

We present a novel pulsed-train near-IR diode laser system with real-time temperature monitoring of the laser-heated cancer cell mixed in gold nanorod solution. Near-IR diode laser at 808nm matching the gold nanorod absorption peak (with an aspect ratio about 4.0) was used in this study. Both surface and volume temperatures were measured and kept above 43°C, the temperature for cancer cells destruction. The irradiation time needed in our pulsed-train system with higher laser fluence for killing the cancel cells is about 13 minutes, much shorter than conventional methods (5-10 minutes). Cell viabilities in gold nanorod mixed and controlled solutions are studied by green fluorescence. Copyright ? 2012 Jui-Teng Lin et al.