A major obstacle in breast cancer is overcoming resistance to chemotherapeutics, specifically antimitotic drugs. My goal in this project is to understand the effect of magnetic nanoparticles as a means to apply nanoscale heating and potentiate the drug action. The project is based on the delivery of a chemotherapeutic agent followed by magnetic mild-hyperthermia (thermal treatment) at 42°C by using superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPION) to treat breast cancer cells in vivo. We are currently studying the effect of the combined treatment through image analysis of histological sections of breast cancer in athymic nude mice.