Lysosomal targeting and photothermal effect of antibody functionalized gold nanoparticles in colorectal cancer cells

• Autor(a) principal: Meireis, André Miguel Forte
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10362/153497
• topic: Cancer; Autophagy; Gold Nanoparticles; Cellular Uptake; Lysosomes; Photothermia; Domínio/Área Científica::Engenharia e Tecnologia::Outras Engenharias e Tecnologias

Cancer is on the verge of becoming the number one cause of deaths worldwide, despite all the efforts and numerous studies regarding the molecular mechanisms underlying carcino- genesis and the development of new approaches to cancer therapy. Current therapies still have major downsides and to overcome them it is of high importance to develop novel approaches that offer better selectivity, minimizing the death of healthy cells, and that are able to overcome the resistance of cancer cells. Autophagy is one of the main cellular mechanisms used by cancer cells to produce enough energy for tumor development and to also resist the effects from certain therapeutic drugs. This mechanism is extremely reliant on the lysosomes and if these were to be disrupted so would the mechanism. In this work we report the study of antibody functionalized gold nanoparticles as potential photothermal agents for specific photoirradiation of the lysosomes in cancer cells. Antibody functionalized gold nanoparticles for specific targeting of the lysosomal mem- brane were synthesized, and cellular uptake and phothotermia assays were performed in a colorectal cancer cell line. Cellular uptake assays revealed increased particle uptake and lyso- somal accumulation of antibody functionalized gold nanoparticles whilst cell viability studies regarding photothermia assays showed no effect on cellular viability. Results demonstrated the active targeting of lysosomes by the synthesized nanoparticles, validating their potential as targeting agents. Future work is needed to evaluate the potential of these particles as possible photothermal agents.