Fighting cancer with light, and a drug that self-assembles into nanoparticles

Chemotherapy that does not harm the body, but effectively fights cancer cells: that is the goal of chemist Sylvestre Bonnet and his team. During his Ph.D. research, chemist Xuequan Zhou brought that goal a little closer. He developed molecules that, upon injection into the bloodstream, self-assemble into nanoparticles that accumulate in the tumor. Targeted irradiation with visible light then attacks the tumor. The research has now been published in Nature Chemistry.