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If Michael Kolios has a magic number, it may be two. For starters, the physics professor's research team has linked up with a research group in China to launch a collaborative project - one that is funded by both the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and the National Science Foundation of China (NSFC). Even the research itself will pull double duty: it will look at a novel technique that could be used to first image and then treat cancer in the body using two approaches.

Micro-bubbles and nanoemulsions, both of which are injected into the body, form a key part of the research. The Chinese and Canadian groups each possess extensive experience in this area of study, and the Chinese team contacted the Canadian group about developing a partnership to combine their complementary expertise.

"My team has been working to determine the size, optical and acoustic properties of the micro-bubbles and nanoemulsions. Meanwhile, the Chinese researchers are experts at coating these agents so they will attach to cancer cells and their blood vessels," says Kolios, who holds a Canada Research Chair in Biomedical Applications of Ultrasound.

The project will make use of Kolios's leading-edge work in ultrasound and photoacoustic imaging. A highly sophisticated technology, photoacoustic imaging picks up the sounds that are produced by body tissues when they are subjected to light pulses, in a similar way that we hear thunder after lightning. Kolios's team is currently one of the only in the world working with the specialized equipment that allows photoacoustic imaging technology to look at single particles of this small size. The equipment itself is housed in Ryerson's Advanced Biomedical Ultrasound Imaging and Spectroscopy Laboratory.

During the three-year initiative, each research team will receive roughly $75,000 annually from their country's respective funding agencies - CIHR for Kolios and NSFC for co-principal investigator Zhigang Wang of Chongging University. Together, the researchers will explore one aspect of "theranostics," a field that studies agents with both a diagnostic and therapeutic function.

Specifically, the teams will follow two streams of study. From an imaging perspective, the researchers will explore how to optimize the physical characteristics of micro-bubbles and nanoemulsions. The goal: to enhance how these agents are detected in the body using imaging techniques. Then, when the scientists are satisfied that the agents are in the correct location, the teams will investigate how to activate the agents to destroy tumours in two ways.

In one of the approaches, a process called optical droplet vaporization is used. Since tumours are known to have a "leaky vasculature" (meaning its separate vessels are chaotic and sieve-like), the nanoemulsions will enter the tumour through the leaky vasculature. When a certain type of light wave is applied to body tissue, the liquid emulsions are converted into a gas. This expansion, in turn, will release a drug contained in the emulsion and also crush the tumour.

In the second approach, micro-bubbles are used. Given that micro-bubbles are roughly half the size of red blood cells, they will remain within the blood system. Since tumours rely on the body's blood vessels for nutrients - and grow their own network of vessels - the micro-bubbles could attack the tumour vessels. So, in the first approach, tumour cells are targeted; in the second approach, tumour blood vessels are targeted.

"It's a big idea and we were the first to explore the idea of optical droplet vaporization," says Kolios, who will be assisted by Ryerson PhD student Eric Strohm, master's student Chester Santiago, research technician Arthur Worthington and a soon-to-be-hired research associate.

In addition to his latest funding from the CIHR, Kolios's research is supported by the Canada Research Chairs program, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada, the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation, the Terry Fox Foundation and Ryerson University.