The MIT team wanted to devise a way to deliver phototherapy and chemotherapy together, which they thought could make the treatment process easier on the patient and might also have synergistic effects.

They decided to use an inorganic material called molybdenum sulfide as the phototherapeutic agent. This material converts laser light to heat very efficiently, so low-powered lasers can be used.

To create a microparticle that could deliver both cancer treatments, the researchers combined molybdenum disulfide nanosheets with either doxorubicin, a hydrophilic drug, or violacein, a hydrophobic drug.