With the immense growth of nanotechnologies for biomedical applications there is a significant interest in the scalable production of smart nanomaterials with intelligent surface design. While a variety of nanomaterials exists, and have been studied in vivo and in vitro, their physical parameters are not constrained in these studies making data interpretation about their biological transformations and interactions difficult to study at the chemistry-biology interface. Consequently, there is a gap in knowledge in our understanding how nanoparticle architectural design affects their biological transformations, motility, nanoparticle-biological interactions, endocytosis, exocytosis, and clearance mechanisms. Given the critical need to successfully transform nanomaterials into efficient drug delivery and imaging agents, well-defined nanomaterials with tightly-controlled size and shape whose NBIs are well understood are of significant interest. Here we will describe the design of hybrid lipid-membrane coated AuNPs of varying size and shape that are anchored with a long-chained hydrophobic thiol to control membrane rearrangement and instability. Changes in the localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR), TEM, and DLS analysis will be employed to evaluate the dispersion characteristics and surface coverage of the suite of AuNPs. Since the ultimate goal is to relate how the nanoparticle design features and their physiochemical properties relate to nanoparticle-cell interactions, we will also discuss the features of lipid-coated AuNPs that lead to particle instability and that enable enhanced cellular uptake and localization within various cell lines. Collectively, we expect that the use of well-characterized AuNPs of constrained shape, size, and surface architecture should allow us to tease apart specific nanoparticle features that drive NBI and mechanisms of endocytosis and exocytosis so that we can harness this knowledge to redirect their behavior to overcome their translational barriers.

Tailoring the surface architecture of gold nanoparticles to engage nanoparticle-cell interactions

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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