Surface-regulated injection dose response of ultrasmall luminescent gold nanoparticles

• Published in: Nanoscale Vol. 14; no. 24; pp. 8818 - 8824
• Main Authors: Zhu, Jiayi, Zhao, Zhipeng, Chen, Huarui, Chen, Xinglin, Liu, Jinbin
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Royal Society of Chemistry 23.06.2022
• Subjects: Binding; Glutathione; Gold; Nanoparticles; Proteins; Serum proteins; Tumors
• ISSN: 2040-3364; 2040-3372
• DOI: 10.1039/d2nr01784a

With the rapid growth of the use of renal-clearable nanomedicines in disease targeting and therapy, a fundamental understanding of their injection dose responses is of great importance for future translation to clinical settings. Using glutathione-coated gold nanoparticles (GS-AuNPs) as a renal-clearable nanomedicine model for the construction of ultrasmall AuNPs with different serum protein binding abilities, we discover that the concentration-dependent serum protein binding capabilities endow GS-AuNPs with a more sensitive response to injection dose than NPs resistant to serum protein binding, resulting in greatly improved tumor-targeting efficiencies during both single and repeated low-dose injections; the performance is also distinct from nonrenal-clearable AuNPs coated with serum protein, which show decreased tumor-targeting efficiency with a decrease in the injection dose. Concentration-dependent serum protein binding capabilities endow renal-clearable AuNPs with a more sensitive response to injection dose than those resistant to serum protein binding, resulting in dose-dependent tumor-targeting efficiencies.