Publisher: College of Physics and Optoelectronic Engineering

Date: September 24, 2024  

Professor Guan Baiou's team from the College of Physics and Optoelectronic Engineering has made groundbreaking strides in fiber optic tumor synergistic therapy, recently publishing their findings in Light: Science & Applications (Impact Factor 20.6).

(Screenshot of the paper)

The research introduces an innovative fiber optic drug delivery and photoconrolled drug release strategy that enables direct drug administration to deep tumor lesions, facilitating a synergistic approach combining photothermal therapy and conventional anti-tumor drugs. This method not only offers a precise and efficient means of targeting tumors but also establishes a novel platform for evaluating drug efficacy and screening during drug development. The paper, titled Fiber optic drug delivery strategy for synergistic cancer photothermal chemotherapy, was published on September 3, 2024.

This treatment strategy shows great promise for the pharmaceutical industry, especially considering that over 90% of drug candidates worldwide fail to obtain clinical approval annually. Notably, around 30% of these failures are due to issues related to systemic toxicity and discrepancies in drug responses between animal models. By delivering drugs directly to the lesions, the fiber optic system effectively circumvents systemic metabolism and reduces variability in response, thus providing a reliable on-demand platform for the evaluation and screening of anti-tumor drugs.

The study was conducted independently by Jinan University, with Master's student Zhang Yongkang as the lead author. Professors Guan Baiou and Ran Yang served as co-corresponding authors, with contributions from Professor Wang Yifei and Professor Zhong Wenbin from the School of Life Sciences and Technology, as well as Directors Li Chengzhi and Cao Donglin from the School of Clinical Medicine. This research was supported by key projects from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (62335010), the local innovation and entrepreneurship team project under the Guangdong Special Support Plan (2019BT02X105), and the special fund for basic scientific research at central universities (21623203).

Read the paper here:

 (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41377-024-01586-z)