Essay On Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma

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Nasopharyngeal carcinoma is one of the head and neck cancer and it’s incidence is less than 1 per 100000 population (about 2-3%). Surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy are common treatment modalities for nasopharynx cancer. Nasopharynx is surrounded by critical organs such as brain stem, spinal cord, temporal lobes, eyes, middle and inner ears and parotid glands; so it is impossible to deliver high doses to the tumor. Therefore, nasopharyngeal carcinoma presented a challenge to radiotherapy and treatment results are not satisfactory. Ionization radiations are used in radiotherapy for cancer treatment and these radiation can control rapid cell growth. Nowadays, radiotherapy is converted to one of the most important modality of cancer …show more content…

These NPs are absorbed by cancerous cells and play an important role in photothermal therapy. In addition, iron oxide NPs induce DNA damage and necrosis/ apoptosis because these NPs convert to iron ions and generate free radicals and ROS. Gold NPs are one of the most popular NP that have been widely used in researches for their inertness, biocompatibility, easy synthesis in different sizes and shapes. Due to their small size, gold NPs are absorbed in blood circulation and they have good permeation in tumor tissue. This is called enhanced permeation and retention effect (EPR). Due to their unique optical properties and high z (z= 79), AuNPs are ideal for hyperthermia and radiation sensitization, respectively. Radioresistant cells- S- phase cells and hypoxic cells- are very sensitive to hyperthermia; hyperthermia increases the oxygen level in tumoral cells, so cell sensitivity to radiation will be increased; hyperthermia suppresses the repair of non- lethal damage from radiotherapy; according to these explanations radiotherapy and photothermal therapy have synergistic effect and combination of these two modalities will improve cancer treatment

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