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Synthesis of different-sized gold nanostars for Raman bioimaging and photothermal therapy in cancer nanotheranostics

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Abstract

Gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) have been attractive for nanomedicine because of their pronounced optical properties. Here, we customerized the methods to synthesize two types of gold nanostars, Au nanostars-1 and Au nanostars-2, which have different spire lengths and optical properties, and also spherical AuNPs. Compared to nanospheres, gold nanostars were less toxic to a variety of cells, including macrophages. Au nanostars-1 and Au nanostars-2 also manifested a similar pattern of tissue distribution upon in vivo administration in mice to that of nanospheres, and but reveled less liver retention than nanospheres. Due to their strong absorption in the near-infrared (NIR), Au nanostars-2 induced a strong hyperthermia effect in vitro upon excitation at 808 nm, and elicited a robust photothermal therapy (PTT) efficacy in ablating tumors in a mouse model of orthotopic breast cancer using 4T1 breast cancer cells. Meanwhile, Au nanostars-1 showed a great capability to enhance the Raman signal through surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) in 4T1 cells. Our combined results opened a new avenue to develop Au nanostars for cancer imaging and therapy.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Basic Research Program (2014CB932000), the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDB14000000) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (21425731, 21637004).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Environmental Chemistry and Ecotoxicology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100085, China

    Jie Gao, Shunhao Wang, Yunan Chen & Sijin Liu

  2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Jie Gao, Shunhao Wang, Yunan Chen & Sijin Liu

  3. Department of Engineering, University of Massachusetts Boston, Boston, MA, 02125, USA

    Maria Sanchez-Purra & Kimberly Hamad-Schifferli

  4. Institute of Biomedicine and Biotechnology, Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen, 518055, China

    Hao Huang, Xuefeng Yu & Qian Luo

  5. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA

    Kimberly Hamad-Schifferli

Authors
  1. Jie Gao
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  2. Maria Sanchez-Purra
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  3. Hao Huang
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  4. Shunhao Wang
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  5. Yunan Chen
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  6. Xuefeng Yu
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  7. Qian Luo
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  8. Kimberly Hamad-Schifferli
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  9. Sijin Liu
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Kimberly Hamad-Schifferli or Sijin Liu.

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Gao, J., Sanchez-Purra, M., Huang, H. et al. Synthesis of different-sized gold nanostars for Raman bioimaging and photothermal therapy in cancer nanotheranostics. Sci. China Chem. 60, 1219–1229 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11426-017-9088-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11426-017-9088-x

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