Biography:

Mostafa A. EL-Sayed received his BSc from Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt; PhD from Florida State University; Postdoctoral Fellow from Yale University, Harvard University and the California Institute of Technology. He was a faculty member in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UCLA (1961-94) and the Julius Brown Chair and Regents Professor Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Georgia Institute of Technology (1994-present).

Professor El-Sayed is an Elected Member of the US National Academy of Sciences (1980), an Elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1986), an Elected Associate Member of the Third World Academy of Sciences (1984); an Inaugural Fellow of the American Chemical Society, the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences. He is an elected Honorary Fellow of the Journals of the Indian and the Chinese Chemical Societies.

He received the King Faisal International Prize in the Sciences, and honorary doctoral degrees from the Faculties of Medicine of both Universities of Mansoura and Alexandria in Egypt. He has received a number of national awards such as the Fresenius, the Tolman, the Richard, the Lindeman and the Seaborg Medals; as well as other numerous local American Chemical Society sectional awards. In 2002, he received the ACS-APS Langmuir National Award in Chemical Physics, and in 2007 he was the Georgia Institute of Technology distinguished Professor of the year; the Fairchild Professor at Caltech and Visiting Miller Professor at UC Berkeley. Professor El-Sayed received the 2007 USA National Medal of Science from the President of the United States in 2008; and in 2009 he received the Medal of the Egyptian Republic of the First Class from the President of Egypt.

Abstract:

Gold Nanoparticles possess a number of properties that are used in cancer diagnosis and therapy:

1. They can scatter light very strongly, and if bound to cancer cells they enable us to detect cancer (used in diagnosis).



2. Depending on their size and shape, they can also absorb light very strongly and convert it into localized photothermal heat that can melt attached cancer cells (used for photo-thermal therapy).



3. Due to their large size compared to molecules, each can carry thousands and thousands of drug molecules, transport them to sick cells, and can enhance their drug effectiveness (used in drug delivery).



4. Due to their small size compared to the cell, we can bind them to its nucleus which can stop cell division and thus convince the cancer cells to commit suicide (apoptosis). Thus gold nanoparticles can themselves act as drugs.