André M Gobin

 

 

Contact:

Rice University / BIOE

MS 142,

6100 Main St

Houston, TX 77005

 

E-mail: amgobin@rice.edu

 

 

 

 

 

 

Background:

André Gobin obtained his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Cornell University in 1992.  He has had 9 ½ years industrial experience in petrochemical process development, catalyst manufacturing, commercial development of new catalyst products and customer technical services.  André worked for 1 ½ years as a lab manager with the West Lab Group prior to beginning the PhD program at Rice.

 

Research Interests:

 

Biological applications of nanoshells: 

 

• Andre has been working on using gold nanoshells as a NIR absorber to enhance tissue welding.  Briefly, Laser tissue welding, or LTW, is emerging as a wound closure technique offering faster and easier application with rapid bonding, reduction in tissue injury and improved healing compared to traditional mechanical closure methods.  Current technology utilizes a variety of protein and polymer solders, focused mainly on absorption of light by tissue components, but also recently with indocyanine green (ICG) dye as a near infrared (NIR) light absorbing chromophore. The use of exogenous NIR absorbers like ICG may offer the ability to minimize collateral tissue damage while increasing weld strengths due to the deeper penetration of NIR light through tissue.  Gold nanoshells are a new class of optically active nanoparticles consisting of a spherical silica core surrounded by a thin gold shell.    Gold nanoshells provide several advantages over ICG, including optical tunability, approximately million-fold higher optical absorption, and resistance to photobleaching.  The use of nanoshells as an exogenous NIR absorber in a tissue solder formulation for LTW is being investigated.  To date mechanical testing analysis of nanoshell solder welds in muscle revealed successful fusion of tissues with tensile strengths of the weld site equal to the native tissue.
• Targeted nanoshells for prostate cancer therapy.  It has been shown that this class of gold nanoshells which absorb in the NIR region can be used as a method for effectively eliminating cancer tumors in mice as they infiltrate the tumor bed.  It has also been shown that one can conjugate various proteins unto the nanoshells.  The focus of this research will be on targeting the vasculature of the tumor bed as well as the specific cell line within the tumor.

 

Interests:

Exploring other cultures and countries, fishing and movies.