**1. Introduction**

100 Hyperthermia

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Cancer is a disease characterized by unregulated growth of cells. This is caused by damage of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) results in mutations to vital genes that control cells divisions *(Albert et al., 2004)*. The most common non-invasive approaches used for cancer treatment represent in chemotherapy, as well as radiotherapy. Chemotherapy uses cytotoxic drugs, which are also known as "anti-cancer" drugs or "anti-neoplastic." On other hand, radiotherapy uses high energy of X-rays which were directed to cancerous tissues to cure or shrink the tumor, as well as to protect the tissue against tumor recurrence. Although chemotherapy and radiotherapy are capable of killing cancerous cell, nevertheless they cause some serious secondary effects including nausea, diarrhea, tiredness and fertility loss *(Johannes et al., 2005)*.The conventional surgery of solid tumors is also an effective therapy for removing of well defined and accessible primary tumors located within nonvital tissue regions. However, this therapy is unsuitable for treatment of ill defined tumors and metastases, as well as tumors that embedded within vital regions *(Hirsch et al., 2003)*.

The current methods for cancer treatment have moderate to severe secondary effects. For this reason, the investigations of new alternatives are essentially. Thermo-therapy is considered one of the most important methods for cancer treatment. In general, the term thermo-therapy refers to both hyperthermia and thermal ablation therapy (*Mriza et al., 2001)*. Hyperthermia therapy is based on the fact that tumor cells are more sensitive to temperature increase than normal tissue cells. It involves tumor heating to temperatures between 41- 42°C inducing almost reversible damage to cells and tissues. For thermal ablation therapy higher temperatures are applied ranging from 50°C to 70°C, leading to destruction of pathologically degenerated cells and irreversible damage resulting in

© 2013 El-Sherbini and El-Shahawy, licensee InTech. This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2013 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

diminishing, disappearing of the tumors or at least growing stop. Thermal methods include radiofrequency ablation (RFA), focused ultrasound thermo-therapy, laser-induced thermal therapy and magnetic thermal ablation *(Hilger et al., 2002)*.

Laser and Radiofrequency Induced Hyperthermia Treatment via Gold-Coated Magnetic Nanocomposites 103

cancer (*Yih and Wei 2005*). Based on nanofabrication and molecular self-assembly, various biologically functional materials and devices, such as tissue and cellular engineering scaffolds, molecular motors and biomolecules, can be fabricated for sensor, drug delivery and mechanical applications (Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering 2004). Nanomedicine has obvious advantages. First, nanoparticles are potentially invaluable tools for investigating cells because of their small size. Second, as their size can be controlled, from that of large molecules to that of small cells, the ability of nanoparticles to escape the vasculature *in vivo* can also be controlled. Third, because of their small size, nanoparticles can circulate systemically in the bloodstream and thus serve in roles such as magnetic resonance enhancement, iron delivery for the production of red blood cells and drug

Nanomedicine has developed in numerous directions, and it has been fully acknowledged that the capability of structuring materials at the molecular scale greatly benefits the research and practice of medicine. However, nanomedicine is a long-term expectation. Before nanomedicine can be used in clinics, fundamental mechanisms of nanomedicine should be fully investigated, and clinical trials and validation procedures should be strictly conducted. Though, it is possible that some biological entities, such as proteins, DNA and other bio-polymers, could be directly used for biosensor applications, nevertheless some serious issues, such as biocompatibility and robustness, may hinder the progress of these efforts. Though in many areas, such as disease diagnosis, targeted drug delivery and molecular imaging, clinical trials of some nanomedicine products are being made, the clinical applications of these techniques, which require rigorous testing and validation procedures, may not be realized in the near future (Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering 2004). At all events, it should be noted that although the applications of nanomaterials in biology and medicine are in an embryo stage, it is the great promise of nanomedicine that has inspired researchers to extensively investigate the interfaces between

The magnetic nanomaterials used in biology and medicine generally fall into three categories: zero dimensional nanomaterials such as nanospheres; one-dimensional nanomaterials such as nanowires and nanotubes; and two-dimensional nanomaterials such as thin films. Usually, all the nanospheres, nanorods, nanowires and nanotubes are called nanoparticles, among which, nanorods, nanowires and nanotubes are high aspect-ratio nanoparticles. In most of the biomedical applications, magnetic nanoparticles are suspended in appropriate carrier liquids, forming magnetic fluids, also called ferrofluids. Among the three types of magnetic nanoparticles, magnetic nanospheres are most widely used in biomedicine. To realize their biomedical applications, the magnetic nanospheres should be stably suspended in the carrier liquid, and they should also carry out certain biomedical functions. The magnetic material most often used is iron oxides, and the carrier liquids are

delivery to improve the availability of serum-insoluble drugs (*Whitesides 2005*).

nanotechnology, biology and medicine (*Satyanarayana, 2005*).

**2.1. Status of nanomedicine** 

**2.2. Magnetic nanomaterials** 

The thermal therapy can provide a minimal invasive alternative to conventional surgical treatment of solid tumors. In addition, the thermal therapeutic procedures are relatively simple to perform and therefore have the potential to improve recovery times and reduce the complication rates and hospital stays *(Hirsch et al., 2003)*. Although, the thermal methods offer several advantages, nevertheless have some of limitations. For example, the tumor volume and speed of ultra-sound thermo therapy is limited by the potential destruction of normal tissue in the near field between the target and the ultrasound probe. Radiofrequency ablation and microwaves approaches suffer from common limitations that are intervening tissue problems. On other wards, the heating effects from these sources are non-specific. In addition, the energy deposition is often much slower with these moieties serving to increase the treatment time and generate less sharp lesion boundaries *(Ko¨hrmann et al., 2002)*.

To overcome these problems, new techniques in the field of nanoscience, nanotechnology and nanomedicine are now developing into treatment approach based on internal heating of tissue such as magnetic fluid hyperthermia (MFH), which in turn based on internal heating sources. In order to achieve the optimal effectiveness, this approach requires photo-thermal convectors to allow heat production within a localized region at lower incident energies. This requires development of particular particles that have highly magnetic properties such as Super-paramagnetic Iron Oxide Nanoparticles Fe3O4 (SPIO NPs). During this approach surrounding healthy cells are capable of surviving exposure to temperatures up to around 46.5°C and more readily able to dissipate heat and maintain a normal temperature while the targeted tumor tissues have a higher thermal sensitivity than normal tissue because of experience difficulty in dissipating heat due to the disorganized and compact vascular structure (reduced blood flow), anaerobic metabolism (acidosis), and nutrient depletion. So an irreversible damage to diseased cells occurs at temperatures in a range from approximately 40°C to about 46°C (Yu-Fen *et al., 2008*).
