Non-specific internalization of laser ablated pure gold nanoparticles in pancreatic tumor cell

Abstract

We investigate the intracellular uptake of 7.3nm, 21.2nm and 31.3nm average size pure colloidal gold nanoparticles synthesized using femtosecond laser ablation technique in pure water. Dark-field imaging, transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was used to assess the uptake of these pure gold nanoparticles in the pancreatic tumor cell line. We show that these ligand-free gold nanoparticles are non-toxic to these cells. The nanoparticles and cell images indicated that unmodified gold nanoparticles interacted with the cells, despite negative surface charge on both the cells and the nanoparticles. We also demonstrate that the uptake of the gold nanoparticles is size-dependent.