Hydrophobicity of Gold Nanoclusters Influences Their Interactions with Biological Barriers

• DOI: 10.1021/acs.chemmater.7b02497
• Publication Date: 2017-08-03T18:12:16Z
• Authors: Estelle Porret; Lucie Sancey; Angela Martín-Ser...; Maria I. Montañez; Ralf Seeman; Akram Yahia-Ammar; Hanako Okuno; Francisca Gomez; Adriana Ariza; Niko Hildebrandt; Jean-Baptiste Fleury; Jean-Luc Coll; Xavier Le Guével
• Keywords: Nanoclusters; Hydrophobe

Understanding how ultrasmall gold nanoparticles (metal core ∼1–1.5 nm), so-called nanoclusters (Au NCs), interact with biological barriers has become highly important for their future bioapplications. The properties of Au NCs tunable hydrophobicity were extensively characterized in three different situations: (i) interaction serum solution, (ii) synthetic free-standing lipid bilayers integrated a microfluidic device, and (iii) cell studies two types (U87MG human primary glioblastoma A375 melanoma lines). Our results indicate significant impact the precise tailoring hydrophilicity/hydrophobicity balance on NC surfaces, which could prevent formation biomolecular absorption while maintaining excellent colloidal stability solutions high contents. Increasing surface enabled more efficient bilayer membrane insertion induced faster cellular uptake. We showed existence threshold, resulted instability, damage, acute cytotoxicity. also demonstrated influence metal–ligand shell fluorescence signal NCs, increasing it near-infrared region. A twofold enhancement was achieved by simple replacement methyl groups ethyl groups.