Jiang Wen, Kim Betty Y S, Rutka James T, Chan Warren C W
Nat Nanotechnol. 2008 Mar;3(3):145-50. doi: 10.1038/nnano.2008.30. Epub 2008 Mar 2.
Nanostructures of different sizes, shapes and material properties have many applications in biomedical imaging, clinical diagnostics and therapeutics. In spite of what has been achieved so far, a complete understanding of how cells interact with nanostructures of well-defined sizes, at the molecular level, remains poorly understood. Here we show that gold and silver nanoparticles coated with antibodies can regulate the process of membrane receptor internalization. The binding and activation of membrane receptors and subsequent protein expression strongly depend on nanoparticle size. Although all nanoparticles within the 2-100 nm size range were found to alter signalling processes essential for basic cell functions (including cell death), 40- and 50-nm nanoparticles demonstrated the greatest effect. These results show that nanoparticles should no longer be viewed as simple carriers for biomedical applications, but can also play an active role in mediating biological effects. The findings presented here may assist in the design of nanoscale delivery and therapeutic systems and provide insights into nanotoxicity.
不同尺寸、形状和材料特性的纳米结构在生物医学成像、临床诊断和治疗中有许多应用。尽管到目前为止已经取得了一些成果，但在分子水平上，对于细胞如何与明确尺寸的纳米结构相互作用仍知之甚少。在这里，我们展示了包被抗体的金纳米颗粒和银纳米颗粒可以调节膜受体内化过程。膜受体的结合、激活以及随后的蛋白质表达强烈依赖于纳米颗粒的大小。虽然发现2至100纳米尺寸范围内的所有纳米颗粒都会改变基本细胞功能（包括细胞死亡）所必需的信号传导过程，但40纳米和50纳米的纳米颗粒显示出最大的效果。这些结果表明，纳米颗粒不应再被视为生物医学应用中的简单载体，还可以在介导生物学效应方面发挥积极作用。此处呈现的研究结果可能有助于纳米级递送和治疗系统的设计，并为纳米毒性提供见解。
