Cardiovascular Research Institute, Yokohama City University, Graduate School of Medicine, Yokohama 236-0004, Japan.
Nanoscale. 2017 Jul 6;9(26):9071-9082. doi: 10.1039/c7nr02229h.
Ultrafine Au quantum clusters (QCs) were synthesized by etching host Au nanoparticles in the presence of ethylenediamine (en) and exhibited both strong photoluminescence (PL) and specific anticancer activity. The cutting-edge feature of this QC compound comprises subnanometer-size rhombohedral Au, which consists of 8 units of the anticancer motif, namely, an Au(en) complex (Au(en)QCs), which contributes to photo- and physicochemical stability as well as subcellular theranostic activity in intracellular PL imaging and in situ targeting. Moreover, the Au(en)QCs can be surface-encapsulated by transferrins (Tf) to create TfAu(en)QCs as a multipurpose drug carrier owing to numerous merits, which include cancer-selective biolabeling, high loading/release efficiency, high activity against drug-resistant tumor cells, low toxicity to normal cells, and physiological stability against biothiols, e.g., glutathiones. These versatile features, which are due to intrinsic optical and anticancer properties, provide potential as a single-drug delivery PL probe for preclinical applications, which has yet to be achieved using conventional nanoclusters.
超精细金量子团簇（QCs）在乙二胺（en）的存在下通过刻蚀主体金纳米颗粒而合成，并表现出强的光致发光（PL）和特定的抗癌活性。该 QC 化合物的最先进特征包括亚纳米尺寸的菱面体金，它由 8 个抗癌基序组成，即金（en）配合物（Au（en）QCs），这有助于光物理化学稳定性以及细胞内 PL 成像和原位靶向的亚细胞治疗活性。此外，由于具有多种优点，例如癌症选择性生物标记、高载药量/释放效率、对耐药肿瘤细胞的高活性、对正常细胞的低毒性以及对生物硫醇（例如谷胱甘肽）的生理稳定性，Au（en）QCs 可以被转铁蛋白（Tf）表面包裹，从而形成 TfAu（en）QCs 作为多用途药物载体。这些多功能特性归因于内在的光学和抗癌特性，为临床前应用提供了作为单一药物递送 PL 探针的潜力，而这是使用传统纳米簇尚未实现的。
