title: Effect of gold nanoparticle aggregation on cell uptake and toxicity.
abstract: Aggregation appears to be a ubiquitous phenomenon among all nanoparticles and its influence in mediating cellular uptake and interactions remain unclear. Here we developed a simple technique to produce transferrin-coated gold nanoparticle aggregates of different sizes and characterized their uptake and toxicity in three different cell lines. While the aggregation did not elicit a unique toxic response, the uptake patterns were different between single and aggregated nanoparticles. There was a 25% decrease in uptake of aggregated nanoparticles with HeLa and A549 cells in comparison to single and monodisperse nanoparticles. However, there was a 2-fold increase in MDA-MB 435 cell uptake for the largest synthesized aggregates. These contrasting results suggest that cell type and the mechanism of interactions may play a significant role. This study highlights the need to investigate the behavior of aggregates with cells on a case-by-case basis and the importance of aggregation in mediating targeting and intracellular trafficking.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering, Terrence Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research, Materials Science and Engineering, University of Toronto, 160 College Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
authors.forename: Alexandre
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Albanese
authors.forename: Warren C W
authors.initials: WC
authors.lastname: Chan
mesh_terms: D001692:Biological Transport; D002470:Cell Survival / Q000187:drug effects; D006046:Gold / Q000737:chemistry / Q000378:metabolism* / Q000633:toxicity*; D006367:HeLa Cells; D006801:Humans; D007700:Kinetics; D053768:Metal Nanoparticles / Q000737:chemistry*; D010316:Particle Size
chemical_list: D006046:Gold