A plasmon-enhanced fluorescent gold coated novel lipo-polymeric hybrid nanosystem: synthesis, characterization and application for imaging and photothermal therapy of breast cancer

• Published in: Nanoscale 2022-06, Vol.14 (25), p.9112-9123
• Main Authors: Appidi, Tejaswini, S, Rajalakshmi, Chinchulkar, Shubham A, Pradhan, Arpan, Begum, Hajira, Shetty, Veeresh, Srivastava, Rohit, Ganesan, Prabhusankar, Rengan, Aravind Kumar
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Breast cancer; Cell death; Chemical synthesis; Chloroauric acid; Disintegration; Dyes; Fluorescence; Gold; Gold coatings; Hybrid systems; Hydrogels; Imaging; Infrared lasers; Nanoparticles; Near infrared radiation; Zebrafish
• ISSN: 2040-3364; 2040-3372
• DOI: 10.1039/d2nr01378a

This study reports a hybrid lipo-polymeric nanosystem (PDPC NPs) synthesized by a modified hydrogel-isolation technique. The ability of the nanosystem to encapsulate hydrophilic and hydrophobic molecules has been demonstrated, and their enhanced cellular uptake has been observed in vitro . The PDPC NPs, surface coated with gold by in situ reduction of chloroauric acid (PDPC-Au NPs), showed a photothermal transduction efficacy of ∼65%. The PDPC-Au NPs demonstrated an increase in intracellular ROS, triggered DNA damage and resulted in apoptotic cell death when tested against breast cancer cells (MCF-7). The disintegration of PDPC-Au NPs into smaller nanoparticles with near-infrared (NIR) laser irradiation was understood using transmission electron microscopy imaging. The lipo-polymeric hybrid nanosystem exhibited plasmon-enhanced fluorescence when loaded with IR780 (a NIR dye), followed by surface coating with gold (PDPC-IR-Au NPs). This paper is one of the first reports on the plasmon-enhanced fluorescence within a nanosystem by simple surface coating of Au, to the best of our knowledge. This plasmon-enhanced fluorescence was unique to the lipo-polymeric hybrid system, as the same was not observed with a liposomal nanosystem. The plasmon-enhanced fluorescence of PDPC-IR-Au NPs, when applied for imaging cancer cells and zebrafish embryos, showed a strong fluorescence signal at minimal concentrations of the dye. The PDPC-IR-Au NPs were also applied for photothermal therapy of breast cancer in vitro and in vivo , and the results depicted significant therapeutic benefits. This study reports the synthesis and application of a hybrid lipo-polymeric nanosystem (PDPC NPs) for plasmon enhanced flourescence based NIR imaging and photothermal therapy.