Author(s):
Lopes, Joana ; Ferreira-Gonçalves, Tânia ; Ascensão, Lia ; Viana, Ana S. ; Carvalho, Lina ; Catarino, José ; Faísca, Pedro ; Oliva, Abel ; de Barros, Dragana P.C. ; Rodrigues, Cecília M.P. ; Gaspar, Maria Manuela ; Reis, Catarina Pinto
Date: 2023
Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10362/158546
Origin: Repositório Institucional da UNL
Subject(s): cancer; ex vivo models; gold nanoparticles; in vitro models; in vivo models; nanomedicine; nanotoxicology; Pharmaceutical Science; SDG 3 - Good Health and Well-being
Description
Funding Information: The authors acknowledge Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) for financial support through Projects UIDB/00645/2020, UIDB/04138/2020, UIDP/04138/2020, PTDC/BTM-MAT/31794/2017, and PTDC/QUI-QIN/0586/2020, as well as PhD fellowships SFRH/BD/148044/2019 and SFRH/BD/147306/2019. The authors are also thankful for the financial support to CESAM by FCT/MCTES (UIDP/50017/2020+UIDB/50017/2020+LA/P/0094/2020+UIDB/00100/2020) through national funds. Publisher Copyright: © 2023 by the authors.
In recent years, gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) have aroused the interest of many researchers due to their unique physicochemical and optical properties. AuNPs are being explored in a variety of biomedical fields, either in diagnostics or therapy, particularly for localized thermal ablation of cancer cells after light irradiation. Besides the promising therapeutic potential of AuNPs, their safety constitutes a highly important issue for any medicine or medical device. For this reason, in the present work, the production and characterization of physicochemical properties and morphology of AuNPs coated with two different materials (hyaluronic and oleic acids (HAOA) and bovine serum albumin (BSA)) were firstly performed. Based on the above importantly referred issue, the in vitro safety of developed AuNPs was evaluated in healthy keratinocytes, human melanoma, breast, pancreatic and glioblastoma cancer cells, as well as in a three-dimensional human skin model. Ex vivo and in vivo biosafety assays using, respectively, human red blood cells and Artemia salina were also carried out. HAOA-AuNPs were selected for in vivo acute toxicity and biodistribution studies in healthy Balb/c mice. Histopathological analysis showed no significant signs of toxicity for the tested formulations. Overall, several techniques were developed in order to characterize the AuNPs and evaluate their safety. All these results support their use for biomedical applications.
