Lay abstract of my research project

Modern chemotherapy treatments cause terrible side effects such as nausea and hair loss. This is because anticancer drugs affect healthy areas of our bodies, not just tumours. The goal of my research is to use Boron/Nitrogen co-doped carbon nano-onions (BN-CNOs) as vehicles to deliver drug molecules directly to cancer tissues. To do this, the nano-onions are coated with a polymer to allow them to be dispersed in water, and therefore travel throughout the body. This polymer coating can also include a targeting ligand, which acts as a honing device to direct the nanoparticles to cancer cells.