INVESTIGATING THE DESIGN OF GOLD NANOPARTICLES TO TARGET DIFFICULT-TO-REACH TUMOR SITES

Certain cancers (metastatic breast cancer, invasive glioma) are deadly because of their inability to be treated using existing methods. For example, metastases are buried within other tissue and the blood-brain barrier limits access to the brain. Nanoparticles, can be engineered to access these areas. In previous studies, iron oxide nanochains have shown significant therapeutic effect compared to spherical nanoparticles. Further investigating the design (shape, size, flexibility) of the particles, will give insight into how these attributes can govern the efficiency of these drug- carrying particles to reach these tumor sites. Although literature shows gold and iron oxide function similarly, gold is easier to synthesize in mass quantities. The hypothesis involved two aspects: finding an effective method to synthesize gold particles, and testing these structures. First, spheres and chains were fabricated and attached to the tripeptide-targeted ligand. These shapes were tested in three in vivo mouse models of breast cancer and glioma (n ≥ 15). The gold content was analyzed and imaged in spleen, brain, kidneys, lungs, and liver using a transmission electron microscope. The amount of gold per organ was measured after digesting the organs using inductively-coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry. A large percentage of targeted spheres have not shown significant drainage in any of the models. Data from in vivo mouse models using chains are still being collected. In conclusion, the ongoing studies suggest that targeting strategies can be custom-engineered to reach difficult-to-target tumor sites, and future studies will focus on the comparison between chains and other structures.