Controlled Plasmonic Coupling of Multifunctional Gold Nanoparticles for Photothermal Cancer Treatment

Plasmonic nanoparticles show great potential to the in-vivo photothermal ablation of tumors because of their efficient near-IR light-to-heat conversion. Here, we show that by finely tuning the plasmonic Au nanoparticle coupling of those nanoparticles the optical absorption can be also finely controlled, broadening it to the near-IR spectral region. Hybrid plasmonic-superparamagnetic nanoparticles are encapsulated in-situ during their gas-phase synthesis by a nanothin, smooth silica coating with a precise control over the coating thickness [1,2,3]. This fine control of the interparticle distance within each agglomerate enables such hybrid bionanoprobes to efficiently convert light-into-heat upon their near-IR irradiation and facilitates their employment as efficient therapeutic agent in photothermal heat tumor ablation. The feasibility of such multifunctional [4] gold nanoparticles as efficient plasmonic photothermal agents is demonstrated by destroying breast cancer cells in vitro upon near-infrared laser irradiation.

References

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[2] Sotiriou G. A., Hirt A. M., Lozach P. Y., Teleki A., Krumeich F. and Pratsinis S. E. Hybrid, silica-coated, Janus-like plasmonic-magnetic nanoparticles. Chem. Mater. 23, 1985-1992 (2011).

[3] Sotiriou G. A., Franco D., Poulikakos D. and Ferrari,A. Optically Stable Biocompatible Flame-Made SiO₂-Coated Y₂O₃:Tb³⁺ Nanophosphors for Cell Imaging. ACS Nano 6, 3888-3897 (2012).

[4] Sotiriou G. A., Biomedical Applications of Multifunctional Plasmonic Nanoparticles. WIREs Nanomed. Nanobiotechnol. 5, 19-30 (2013).