Light-Responsive Gold Nanoparticles for Tumour Theranostics

Xiaju Cheng, Rui Sun, Haibin Shi *

 

State Key Laboratory of Radiation Medicine and Protection, School for Radiological and Interdisciplinary Sciences (RAD-X) and Collaborative Innovation Center of Radiation Medicine of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions, Soochow University, Suzhou 215123, P. R. China.

 

* Corresponding author. E-mail: hbshi@suda.edu.cn  

 

Presented: 2018 Chinese Conference on Oncology. Shenyang, China, Aug. 17-19, 2018; Published: Oct. 18, 2018

 

Citation: Xiaju Cheng, Rui Sun, and Haibin Shi, Light-Responsive Gold Nanoparticles for Tumour Theranostics. Nano Biomed. Eng., 2018, Special Issue: 319.

 

Abstract

Gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) as potent theranostic agents have extensively been studied for photothermal therapy, radiosensitization, and photoacoustic (PA) imaging of cancers. Spatiotemporally manipulating the aggregation behavior can effectively improve the photothermal efficacy, radiosensitization and imaging capability of small AuNPs in vivo. Herein, we for the first time demonstrated that AuNPs decorated with photolabile diazirine moieties could form covalently cross-linked aggregates upon laser irradiation (λ = 405 nm). Both in vitro and in vivo studies indicated that the light-triggered assembling remarkably shifted the surface plasmon resonance of Au particles to near-infrared regions and prolonged the residence time of AuNPs within tumors, which in consequence effectively enhanced the efficacy of photothermal therapy, radiosensitization, and sensitivity of photoacoustic imaging of tumours. We thus believe that the light-triggered crosslinking strategy may offer a valuable approach for improving the theranostic efficacies of functional NPs.

 

Keywords: Gold nanoparticles; Light-responsive; Photothermal therapy; Radiosensitization; Photoacoustic imaging

 

Copyright© Xiaju Cheng, Rui Sun, and Haibin Shi. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

 

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