Bioconjugation of Gold Nanobipyramids for SERS Detection and Targeted Photothermal Therapy in Breast Cancer

Abstract

Gold nanobipyramids (Au NBPs) with two sharp tips present an extremely strong electric field enhancement, which endows them with more advantages in biomedical photonics than other gold nanostructures. The application of Au NBPs for diagnosis and therapy is now under intensive investigation. Here, we report Au NBPs for surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) detection and photothermal therapy (PTT) of MCF-7 cancer cells both in vitro and in vivo via bioconjugation with Raman reporter 2-naphthalenethiol (2-NAP) and folic acid (FA). The results showed that bioconjugated Au NBPs not only could be used for the quantitative detection of the MCF-7 cells in the range of 5−500 cells/mL, but also lead to the enhanced Raman signal in MCF-7 tumor-bearing nude mice with high specificity. Moreover the bioconjugated Au NBPs exhibited excellent photothermal performance in both in vitro and in vivo therapies, in which the cell viability decreased to 6.44% and the relative volume of MCF-7 tumors treated with bioconjugated Au NBPs reduced to 0.037 under the irradiation of an 808 nm laser. Our results indicate that bioconjugated Au NBPs offer an excellent nanoplatform for PTT and SERS detection in the future.

Recent advances in functional nanostructures as cancer photothermal therapy

“…Furthermore, a new Au nanostructure (Au nanobipyramids) was reported to be applied for breast cancer detection and treatment in which Au nano-bipyramids were bio-conjugated with 2-naphthalenethiol and folic acid to target and kill human breast (adenocarcinoma) cells. 52 The authors revealed that the conjugated Au nano-bipyramids are capable of quantitative detection of the MCF-7 cells as well as enhancement of photothermal effect in vivo and in vitro.…”

Quantum cytosensor for early detection of cancer

“…Current approaches of cancer detection by SERS focuses on sensing cancer‐related biomarkers and in vitro detection. Additionally, there are various studies which employ SERS to detect cancer by using both biomarkers and in vitro techniques (Feng et al, ; Huefner, Kuan, Barker, & Mahajan, ; Lee et al, ). However, most of the existing SERS probes are in the nanoscale size range which majorly influenced by several parameters such as size, surface chemistry, origin and type of cell (Austin, Kang, Yen, & El‐Sayed, ; Kang, Austin, & El‐Sayed, ; Song, Pu, Zhou, Duan, & Duan, ).…”

Rapid synthesizing of gold nanobipyramids

“…Thus substituting GNRs for GBPs should be beneficial in some applications [5,6], e.g. for photodynamic and photothermal therapies [7] probes for bio-applications [8], detection of influenza virus [9], surface-enhanced Raman scattering detection [10], as well as cancer cell imaging and photodynamic therapies [11].…”