Facile preparation of albumin-stabilized gold nanostars for the targeted photothermal ablation of cancer cells

Abstract

Gold nanostars (AuNSs) have been extensively studied as photothermal conversion agents for cancer therapy due to their high photothermal conversion efficiency. Surface modification is required to improve their colloidal stability and biocompatibility for biomedical applications. Moreover, the targeting delivery of AuNSs into the tumor sites is an effective approach to improve their therapeutic efficiency. In this study, we report the use of folic acid-bovine serum albumin conjugate (BSA-FA) stabilized AuNSs (BSA-FA-AuNSs) as agents for the targeted photothermal ablation of cervical cancer cells (HeLa). In our approach, BSA-FA conjugate was first synthesized via an amidation reaction, which was further used as a stabilizer to coat the AuNSs for surface modification. The BSA-FA-AuNSs showed good dispersibility and colloidal stability in different media. The strong absorption properties in the near-infrared (NIR) region enabled the increasing temperature of AuNSs under laser irradiation. The BSA-FA-AuNSs not only had a very low cytotoxicity in the studied concentrations, but they also showed targeting specificity to FA receptors-overexpressed cancer cells, which was confirmed by studying the cellular uptake. In addition, the BSA-FA-AuNSs displayed a much better therapeutic efficiency to HeLa cells under the NIR laser irradiation when compared with BSA-AuNSs without FA modification. The BSA-FA-AuNSs should have a great potential as photothermal conversion agents for the receptor-mediated treatment of cancer cells.

High antiviral activity of mercaptoethane sulfonate functionalized Te/BSA nanostars against arterivirus and coronavirus

“…1a) showed that the asprepared Te/BSA nanostars had a triangular star shape, which was obviously different from that of the spherical Te/BSA nanospheres, 39 indicating that MES not only acts as a reductant, but also remarkably modies the morphology of NPs, which is similar to the role of ascorbic acid in the synthesis of BSA/Au nanostars. 40 The TEM image also showed the good dispersion of Te/BSA nanostars, with an average size of 57 AE 7.6 nm, which was basically consistent with the result of dynamic light scattering (DLS; Fig. 1b).…”

Strategies for Preparing Albumin-based Nanoparticles for Multifunctional Bioimaging and Drug Delivery

“…Albumin could be used to stabilize gold nanoparticles (nanorod and nanostar) 202 , 203 . Loading the nanoparticle with rifampicin to enhance the antitumor drug accumulation in the MDR cancer cells resulted in improved PTT with decreased toxicity 204 .…”

Geometry-induced protein reorientation on the spikes of plasmonic gold nanostars

“…[5][6][7][8] Surface loading and orientation (or conformation) of surface ligands will alter signicantly the interaction these nanostructures with cells by changing the activity of these ligands, but is rarely considered for rationale design of these particles. [9][10][11] Currently, it is unclear whether protein-gold nanoparticle (AuNP) binding (capacity or conformation) at the nanoparticle surface are dependent on their radius of curvature. It has been suggested that, for spherical, citrate capped AuNPs, surface curvature alters the structure and binding capacity of adsorbed proteins onto their surface, although this issue remains controversial.…”