Dr. Hadiyah-Nicole Green is a physicist best known as the first person to have successfully cured cancer in mice using laser-activated nanoparticles. She specializes in targeted cancer therapeutics, using laser-activated nanoparticles and immunotherapies to develop biomarker-specific platforms to target, image, and treat malignant tumors.Her method consists of using an FDA-approved drug containing nanoparticles that are injected into the subject, which causes the cancer tumors to glow when under imaging equipment.
The laser then activates the nanoparticles by heating them, and because it identifies cancer cells during the procedure, healthy cells are not affected.Dr. Green is one of the first African American women in the nation to earn a Ph.D. in physics, holds the distinction of being only the second African American woman and the fourth African American to receive a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB).She is also the founder of theΒ Ora Lee Smith Cancer Research Foundation.
Her foundation is named after her aunt who had cancer and preferred to die than to experience the harsh side effects of chemotherapy and radiation treatments. This inspired Dr. Green to successfully develop an alternative treatment that would not require chemotherapy, radiation, or surgery.Dr. Green’s work is not yet finished though. Her method has only cured animals from cancer, not humans. However, her ultimate goal is to translate her treatments from the laboratory into humans to demonstrate efficacy in a variety of cancer models.
