Abstract:
Gold nanoparticles can be conjugated with
antibodies or other proteins, and the resulting
composite particles will selectively attach to various
kinds of biological material. Although exploitation of
this for staining microscopy specimens is well
known, there has recently been interest in attaching
gold nanoparticles to live cells for therapeutic
reasons. One motivation is that gold nanoparticles
display a strong plasmon resonance with light, which
can be exploited in principle for an ‘in vivo’
photothermal therapy. The treatment of cancer by
this technique has recently received attention by
others, but here we show how gold nanoparticlebased
therapies can be developed to target live
macrophage cells. We have employed ‘active
targeting’, a scheme in which gold nanoparticles are
functionalised with an antibody specific to the target
macrophage cell. We describe how to prepare the
conjugated particles, demonstrate that they will
selectively attach ‘in vitro’ to their target
macrophage cell but not to a non-target cell type
and show that their presence renders the target cell
susceptible to destruction by a low power laser.
