Photodynamic therapy of cancer cells using folate conjugated gold nanoparticles as a new nanoplatform for targeted cancer therapy

Abstract

Photodynamic therapy works through photo activation of a specific photosensitizer in a tumor in the presence of oxygen. PDT is widely applied in oncology to treat various cancers as it has a minimally invasive procedure and high selectivity, does not interfere with other treatments, and can be repeated as needed. A large amount of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and singlet oxygen is generated in a cancer cell during PDT, which destroys the tumor effectively. In this study, explained utilization of gold nanoparticles as a photosensitizer in photodynamic therapy of primary liver cancer and colorectal cancer that showed gold NPs exerted cytotoxic effects on cancer cells in dose dependent manner. In this study also used folic acid (a water-soluble vitamin) as ligand to increase targeting of nanoparticles to cancer cells were tumor cells over-expressing folate receptors for their rapid proliferation. The results showed that the folic acid conjugated Au NPs exerted a significant cytotoxic effect on cancer cells (decrease in cells viability) (p˂0.001) and upon irradiations the effects also enhanced significantly comparing with gold nanoparticles alone.