The Applications of Glutathione-Capped Gold Nanoclusters in Cancer Nanotheranostics

Chunlei Zhang ^{1, 2}*, Amin Zhang ¹, Tianliang Li ¹, Daxiang Cui ^{1, 2}*

 

¹ Institute of Nano Biomedicine and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 800 Dongchuan Road, Shanghai 200240, China.

² National Center for Translational Medicine, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 800 Dongchuan Road, Shanghai 200240, China.

 

* Corresponding authors. E-mail: chunleizhang@sjtu.edu.cn; dxcui@sjtu.edu.cn

 

Presented: 2018 Chinese Conference on Oncology. Shenyang, China, Aug. 17-19, 2018; Published: Oct. 18, 2018

 

Citation: Chunlei Zhang, Amin Zhang, Tianliang Li, and Daxiang Cui, The Applications of Glutathione-Capped Gold Nanoclusters in Cancer Nanotheranostics. Nano Biomed. Eng., 2018, Special Issue: 323.

 

Abstract

Among the thiolate protected gold nanoclusters (GNCs), chiral glutathione (i.e. GSH; γ-Glu-Cys-Gly), a naturally occurring and readily available tripeptide, has been commonly used as a monolayer thiolate ligand for GNCs synthesis. Moreover, GSH-capped GNCs are finding increasing acceptance in various biomedical fields, such as molecular imaging, cancer therapy, and gene delivery. In recent years, X-ray/CT imaging and in vivo fluorescence imaging demonstrated that GSH-capped GNCs were renal-clearable. We have developed several methods to self-assembly of GSH-capped GNCs into larger colloidal supernanostructure for the applications of cancer nanotheranostics, including: 1) the applications of GNCs assemblies induced by the gadolinium ions for in vivo X-ray CT/MR imaging of lung tumor-bearing mice, 2) GNCs assemblies induced by PEG and chemotherapeutics for lung cancer targeted near-infrared fluorescence imaging and chemo-photodynamic therapy, and 3) the complexes of GNCs-engineered assemblies and folic acid coming from water-evaporation-induced self-assembly to mimic pathogenic cellular invasion. In all, the promising prospect of GNCs renders them as multifunctional cancer nanotheranostics with specificity, efficacy, and safety.

 

Keywords: Glutathione, Gold nanoclusters, Nanotheranostics, Self-assembly

 

Copyright© Chunlei Zhang, Amin Zhang, Tianliang Li, and Daxiang Cui. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

 

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