Photothermal therapy is a rising promise for treating different cancer cells. However, there are side effects from this therapy, and thus our team is interested in technique development of PPTT using metallic nanoparticles. The PPTT protocol will be developed upon a modification of the irradiation therapy using two major changes. The first is using a less harmful visible light or a harmless near infrared light, and the second is using gold-loaded biocompatible nanoparticles. Acrylate nanoparticles will be loaded with desired types of gold nanoparticles at different sizes. The gold-loaded gold nanoparticles will be conjugated to cancer cells. By selectively delivering the gold nanoparticles into cancer cells, irradiating a harmless near infrared light will achieve a thermal ablation to cancer cells. Based on imaging spectroscopy and flow cytometry, results showed reduction of gold loaded-normal cancer cells upon irradiating with a near infrared light, and no change in the number of cancer cells with irradiating with light only. The second project focuses on gold and platinum complexes as potential DNA intercalators and contrasting agents. Computational studies showed greater stacking interaction between DNA nucleotides and Au(I) trimer comparable to common intercalators such as ethidium bromide and anti-cancer medicines such as ellipticine. Luminescence, binding studies, and DNA gel electrophoresis are now in progress.