Breast cancer (BrCa) is the second leading cause of cancer death in women and this year about 40,000 women are predicted to die from BrCa. About 10-20% of BrCa are found to be triple negative, an even more severe type of BrCa that has lower survival rates. Triple negative BrCa (TNBC) does not express the genes for hormone epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER-2), estrogen receptors (ER), and progesterone receptors (PR) which means hormone therapy and drugs that target these receptors are ineffective means of treatment. Recently the use of nanoparticles has become popular and this research focuses on the synthesis and characterization of multifunctional theranostic silica-gold, core-shell nanoparticles (SGCSNs) which will be used for imaging and photothermal therapy of TNBC. The nanoparticles were synthesized by first making a silica core, reducing the amount of gold used during synthesis, and then seeding the core with gold nanoparticles to form a gold shell. A bifunctional PEG was attached to the surface of the synthesized nanoparticles; one end has a thiol ligand attached which bonds to the gold shell of the nanoparticles by a gold-sulfur bond and the other end has folic acid attached which binds to the folate receptor which is seen to be over expressed in many TNBCs. A gold shell was chosen for the synthesis of the nanoparticles because gold serves as a good agent for CT scanning because of its high Z value which makes the nanoparticles ideal for imaging. Also because of surface plasmon resonance, gold nanoparticles can be used to destroy cells through photothermal therapy. The theranostic SGCSNs were synthesized characterized and a bifunctional PEG was attached for applications in imaging and photothermal therapy of TNBC in vitro, using MDA-MB-231 cells. If successful SGCSNs could be useful in both imaging and photothermal therapy and could greatly improve the quality of life of TNBC patients.

Multifunctional theranostic silica-gold core-shell nanoparticles for breast cancer applications

250th National Meeting (2015)

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