Study of glutathione protected gold nanoclusters on HeLa cytotoxicity / 国际生物医学工程杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To investigate the effects of glutathione protected gold nanoclusters (GSH-Au NCs) on HeLa cytotoxity.Methods Fluorescence intensity were measured on GSH-Au NCs containing medium treated cells using fluorescence spectrophotometer at different time points.GSH-Au NCs uptake by HeLa cells at 1,2,6,12 and 24 h were investigated through fluorescent spectrophotometer.In vivo tumor uptake was also investigated on BALB/c tumor-bearing mice through inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) at 24 h after intraperitoneal injection of 0.2 ml GSH-Au NCs (3 mmol/L) and distilled water (control group) respectively.The cytotoxicity of GSH-Au NCs at different doses (0.003-0.3 mmol/L) was tested at 24 and 48 h using MTT assay after interaction with HeLa cells.Results The uptake efficiency of GSH-Au NCs by HeLa cells kept increasing and reached maximum of 73.13％ at 24 h.The results of tumor-bearing mice indicated that the tumor tissue had higher uptake efficiency after 24 h (320±15) ng/g than that of control group (intraperitoneal injection of distilled water),and the difference was stastically significant (P＜0.05).HeLa cells were treated with different concentrations of GSH-Au NCs for 24 h,and GSHAu NCs had a slight effect on cell viability.With the increase of GSH-Au NCs dose,the inhibition effects on growth of HeLa cells enhanced.The cell activity of HeLa cells treated with 0.3 mmol/L GSH-Au NCs for 24 h reduced to 86％compared with that of control group (the concentration of GSH-Au NCs was 0) (P＜0.05),while there was no significant difference between the survival rate of different concentrations of GSH-Au NCs group and the control group for 48 h.Conclusions GSH-Au NCs have neglectable cytotoxity on HeLa cells even though both in vitro and in vivo uptake are high.GSH-Au NCs are suitable for biomedical application such as imaging,drug loading and targeted drug delivery.