Abstract
Nanotechnologies are increasingly being developed for medical purposes. However, these nanomaterials require ultrastability for better control of their pharmacokinetics. The present study describes three types of ultrastable gold nanoparticles stabilized by thiolated polyethylene glycol groups remaining intact when subjected to some of the harshest conditions described thus far in the literature, such as autoclave sterilization, heat and freeze-drying cycles, salts exposure, and ultracentrifugation. Their stability is characterized by transmission electron microscopy, UV-visible spectroscopy, and dynamic light scattering. For comparison purposes, two conventional nanoparticle types were used to assess their colloidal stability under all conditions. The ability of ultrastable gold nanoparticles to encapsulate bimatoprost, a drug for glaucoma treatment, is demonstrated. MTS assays on human corneal epithelial cells is assessed without changing cell viability. The impact of ultrastable gold nanoparticles on wound healing dynamics is assessed on tissue engineered corneas. These results highlight the potential of ultrastable gold nanoparticles as a drug delivery system in ocular therapy.
Highlights
Gold nanoparticles (GNPs) are known as highly tunable materials and are studied in various research fields such as nanomedicine [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]
While the UV-visible spectra remain stable after the heating treatment, both Transmission Electron microscopy (TEM) and Dynamic Light Scattering (DLS) revealed a significant reduction of the GNP core and hydrodynamic diameters, suggesting a reorganization of these GNP during the treatment
GNP NUS instability is confirmed by the UV-visible spectra, TEM images and DLS after freeze drying, autoclaving and salts treatments, where an increase of 7% and a decrease of 11% and 20% are respectively observed for the absorbance values of their plasmon bands
Summary
Gold nanoparticles (GNPs) are known as highly tunable materials and are studied in various research fields such as nanomedicine [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]. The weak stability against physiological buffering salts excludes the use of many GNP types for biomedical applications, since blood is a highly ionic media [10]. An exhaustive review of highly-stable and ultrastable GNPs led to only a dozen publications describing new synthesis conditions and resistance against different criteria [11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22].
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