Abstract
Lung cancer is a particularly difficult form of cancer to diagnose and treat, due largely to the inaccessibility of tumours and the limited available treatment options. The development of plasmonic gold nanoparticles has led to their potential use in a large range of disciplines, and they have shown promise for applications in this area. The ability to functionalise these nanoparticles to target to specific cancer types, when combined with minimally invasive therapies such as photothermal therapy, could improve long-term outcomes for lung cancer patients. Conventionally, continuous wave lasers are used to generate bulk heating enhanced by gold nanorods that have accumulated in the target region. However, there are potential negative side-effects of heat-induced cell death, such as the risk of damage to healthy tissue due to heat conducting to the surrounding environment, and the development of heat and drug resistance. In this study, the use of pulsed lasers for photothermal therapy was investigated and compared with continuous wave lasers for gold nanorods with a surface plasmon resonance at 850 nm, which were functionalised with anti-EGFR antibodies. Photothermal therapy was performed with both laser systems, on lung cancer cells (A549) in vitro populations incubated with untargeted and targeted nanorods. It was shown that the combination of pulse wave laser illumination of targeted nanoparticles produced a reduction of in the cell viability compared with control exposures, which demonstrates a possible application for minimally invasive therapies for lung cancer.
Highlights
Cancer is a leading cause of death worldwide with approximately 70% of deaths occurring in low- and middle-income countries [1]
Several images (N = 248) were acquired by scanning pseudo-randomly across the microscope slides to cover the majority of the sample and ensure a representative illustration of the cellular uptake was observed
The conjugation of the S-Au40-849 AuNRs with the anti-epidermal growth factor receptors (EGFR) monoclonal antibodies had a considerable effect on the overall uptake when incubated with the lung cancer cells for longer than 4 h and the results provide a compelling argument to use molecularly targeted AuNRs for the selective delivery of high concentrations of AuNRs to malignant tissues
Summary
Cancer is a leading cause of death worldwide with approximately 70% of deaths occurring in low- and middle-income countries [1]. Plasmonic photothermal therapy (PPTT) is a therapeutic modality, when combined with AuNRs could provide a highly selective, minimally invasive treatment option for cancer. It would be beneficial if PPTT could be administered with a pulsed-wave (PW) laser since it would reduce the potential damage to surrounding tissues by eliminating the bulk heating effect caused by continuous wave (CW) lasers. Laser ablation (LA), a common clinical therapeutic technique that relies on lasers, is predominantly used to compliment additional therapies by reducing tumour volume [3] It is mostly used for treating superficial and lung cancers where laser access and light delivery is feasible [4]
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