Therapeutic efficacy of plasmonic photothermal nanoparticles in hamster buccal pouch carcinoma.

The objective of this study was to assess the short-term effect of plasmonic photothermal therapy (PPTT) on induced hamster buccal pouch (HBP) carcinoma.Seventy-six Syrian golden male hamsters were used. The induced HBP carcinomas were directly injected with ∼30 nm gold nanospheres followed by 15 min laser exposure (PPTT).PPTT caused rapid growth cessation and dramatic decrease in tumor sizes after 4 weeks of treatment (P < .05) compared to controls. Microscopic and immunohistochemical examination of the tumor biopsies revealed significant differences in the cellular apoptotic index (AI) value and proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) immunoexpression in PPTT-treated tumor tissue sections compared to controls (P < .05). Survival probability of the treated animals was increased compared to controls (P < .05).PPTT proved to be a successful method for treating superficially located HBP carcinomas.