Boron-containing quantum dots as promising fluorescent markers for boron neutron capture therapy
Seminars
Bogoliubov Laboratory of Theoretical Physics
Low Energy Nuclear Physics and Theory of Condensed Matter Seminar
Date and Time: Tuesday, 17 June 2025, at 11:00 AM
Venue: Blokhintsev Lecture Hall, Bogoliubov Laboratory of Theoretical Physics
Seminar topic: “Boron-containing quantum dots as promising fluorescent markers for boron neutron capture therapy”
Speaker: Rashid Nazmitdinov
The Boron neutron capture therapy is one of the promising methods for treating a number of oncological diseases. The essence of the method is the accumulation of a large content of boron by diseased cells, localisation of these cells, and their subsequent irradiation with thermal neutrons. Boron-containing nanoparticles are the main components of boron delivery systems to cancer cells. However, the boron fluorescence region is in the 400-500 nm range, which complicates further localisation of cancer cells since the transparency region of human tissues is in the 750-1000 nm range. This problem can be solved using nanoshells consisting of a dielectric core and a metal shell. The authors demonstrate that these nanoshells can be designed to produce a strong absorption that gives rise to a plasmon resonance in the near-infrared wavelength region. This feature, based on Fano resonance phenomenon, allows invoking such nanoshells for fluorescence enhancement of boron-containing nanoparticles to be used as markers in tumour cells. The closed-form expression for asymmetric resonance in a nanoshell is derived in the dipoleapproximation.