Light-activated nanoparticles could help surgeons see glioblastoma more clearly and destroy cancer cells that remain after surgery.
Glioblastoma can spread microscopic cancer cells into healthy brain tissue, making the most aggressive form of brain cancer exceptionally difficult to remove completely. Surgeons must eliminate as much of the tumor as possible without damaging surrounding areas that control essential functions.
Treatment faces another obstacle in the blood-brain barrier, which restricts the ability of drugs and radiotherapy to reach the brain. Together, these challenges contribute to a five-year survival rate of only about 7 percent.
Researchers from the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Harvard, and Henan universities have developed a ‘double punch’ nanozyme platform intended to tackle both problems using the same smart nanoparticle material. The work was published in Science Translational Medicine.
One material handles two stages
“We’ve engineered a single material that does two jobs in sequence,” said Dr. Bingyang Shi, Chair Professor of nanomedicine from the School of Electrical, Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering at UTS. “It’s a precise guide for the surgeon during the operation, and then a targeted clean-up treatment afterward.”
At the center of the platform is an extremely thin, two-dimensional sheet containing individually positioned atoms. The atoms are deposited one at a time using a method adapted from semiconductor manufacturing.
This structure allows the material to perform two separate functions. It can help image cancer during surgery and then provide phototherapy after the operation, with both functions activated by the same near-infrared light.
Light exposes tiny tumor clusters
“During surgery, it functions as a highly sensitive imaging agent,” said Professor Shi. “A fluorescent dye engineered onto the sheet glows under a near-infrared wavelength invisible to the naked eye, allowing surgeons to see individual tumor cell clusters as small as 44 micrometers, a resolution beyond current clinical imaging tools. A targeting molecule attached to the material also helps it cross the blood-brain barrier and accumulate specifically in glioma cells.
This could allow surgeons to identify clusters of cancer cells too small for current clinical imaging methods to reveal. The targeting molecule is also designed to help the material pass through the blood-brain barrier and concentrate inside glioma cells.
“After the visible tumor is removed, the same material is administered into the surgical cavity and reactivated with the same wavelength of light for postoperative phototherapy,” he said. “The platinum atoms convert the tumor’s own hydrogen peroxide into oxygen, counteracting the low-oxygen environment that normally shields cancer cells from treatment, while the light simultaneously generates heat and reactive molecules that destroy microscopic cancer cells that surgery could not reach.”
The second stage is intended to attack cancer cells that remain after the visible tumor has been removed. Platinum atoms in the material turn hydrogen peroxide produced by the tumor into oxygen, helping counter the oxygen-poor conditions that can protect cancer cells from treatment. At the same time, light produces heat and reactive molecules that can damage residual cancer cells.
In mouse models of glioblastoma, the treatment suppressed tumor recurrence following surgery. Every treated mouse was alive at 60 days, compared with a survival of 42 days for animals that received surgery alone. Follow-up testing detected no neurological or motor deficits caused by the treatment.
Human testing remains the key hurdle
“The results are very encouraging, but this is still early-stage research carried out in mouse models, not in people – and that distinction is important,” said Professor Shi. “Its imaging and therapeutic performance will also need to be confirmed at the scale of a human brain.
The results therefore remain preclinical, and the technology still needs substantial testing before its performance in people can be determined. In particular, researchers will need to establish whether its imaging and treatment capabilities can work effectively across the much larger scale of a human brain.
“If this continues to hold up through that process, the hope is that surgeons could one day see more of the tumor during an operation and treat more of what’s left behind afterward. It’s a meaningful step towards reducing recurrence, which remains one of the biggest challenges for people with glioblastoma.”
Reference: “Spatiotemporal-switchable 2D NIR-II single-atom nanozyme for single-cell–level surgical navigation and glioblastoma phototherapy” by Ping Shangguan, Yong Zhong, Haigang Wu, Yisheng Liu, Gaoyang Wang, Cai Qi, Jiang Ouyang, Senfeng Zhao, Xin Wang, Jinlong Yin, Xiaoyuan Ji, Feng Bai, Kelong Fan, Jiefei Wang, Wei Tao and Bingyang Shi, 5 August 2026, Science Translational Medicine.
DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.aeb8054
Funding: National Natural Science Foundation of China, National Natural Science Foundation of China, Natural Science Foundation of Henan Province, Henan Provincial Science and Technology Research Project, China Postdoctoral Science Foundation, Science and Technology Innovation Talents in Universities of Henan Province
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