GNS Toxicity Investigation

Abstract

GNS toxicity study evaluating biocompatibility is crucial for their biomedical applications and future clinical translation (Perazella in Clin J Am Soc Nephrol 4:461–469, 2009 [1]; Muldoon et al in Neurosurgery 57:785–796, 2005 [2]). Previous studies with various animal models including mice, rats and dogs have demonstrated that gold nanoparticles with a spherical shape are biocompatible (Khlebtsov and Dykman in Chem Soc Rev 40:1647–1671, 2011 [3]; Gad et al in Int J Toxicol 31:584–594, 2012 [4]; Yen et al in Small 5:1553–1561, 2009 [5]; Cho et al in Toxicol Appl Pharmacol 236:16–24, 2009 [6]; Shukla et al in Langmuir 21:10644–10654, 2005 [7]; Connor et al in Small 1:325–327, 2005 [8]). However, few studies have reported toxicity evaluation of nonspherical gold nanoparticles (like star-shape). Herein, we performed both in vitro and in vivo toxicity studies to investigate potential deleterious effect of PEGylated GNS nanoparticles after IV administration.