Surface-regulated injection dose response of ultrasmall luminescent gold nanoparticles

Nanoscale. 2022 Jun 23;14(24):8818-8824. doi: 10.1039/d2nr01784a.

Abstract

With the rapid growth of the use of renal-clearable nanomedicines in disease targeting and therapy, a fundamental understanding of their injection dose responses is of great importance for future translation to clinical settings. Using glutathione-coated gold nanoparticles (GS-AuNPs) as a renal-clearable nanomedicine model for the construction of ultrasmall AuNPs with different serum protein binding abilities, we discover that the concentration-dependent serum protein binding capabilities endow GS-AuNPs with a more sensitive response to injection dose than NPs resistant to serum protein binding, resulting in greatly improved tumor-targeting efficiencies during both single and repeated low-dose injections; the performance is also distinct from nonrenal-clearable AuNPs coated with serum protein, which show decreased tumor-targeting efficiency with a decrease in the injection dose.

MeSH terms

  • Gold / metabolism
  • Humans
  • Luminescence
  • Metal Nanoparticles*
  • Nanomedicine
  • Neoplasms* / therapy

Substances

  • Gold