Biologically Functional Cationic Phospholipid−Gold Nanoplasmonic Carriers of RNA

Abstract

Biologically functional cationic phospholipid-gold nanoplasmonic carriers have been designed to simultaneously exhibit carrier capabilities, demonstrate improved colloidal stability, and show no cytotoxicity under physiological conditions. Cargo, such as RNA, DNA, proteins, or drugs, can be adsorbed onto or incorporated into the cationic phospholipid bilayer membrane. These carriers are able to retain their unique nanoscale optical properties under physiological conditions, making them particularly useful in a wide range of imaging, therapeutic, and gene delivery applications that utilize selective nanoplasmonic properties.

Multilayered polyelectrolyte-coated gold nanorods as multifunctional optical contrast agents for cancer cell imaging

“…Based on their scattering property, GNRs can be utilized as "scattering contrast agents" for dark field imaging of cells (Ding et al, 2007;Oyelere et al, 2007;Yu et al, 2007a;2007b;Hu et al, 2009;Lee et al, 2009).…”

Quantitative Replacement of Cetyl Trimethylammonium Bromide by Cationic Thiol Ligands on the Surface of Gold Nanorods and Their Extremely Large Uptake by Cancer Cells

“…[13,14] Various strategies have been developed to functionalize gold nanorods with a variety of different ligands to reduce their cytotoxicity. [12,[15][16][17][18][19][20] Further reports have dealt with the problems of stability and biocompatibility of Au NRs by using various polymer shells, [21] polyelectrolytes, [22,23] peptides, [24] surfactants, [25] and lipids [14,26] to modify the Au NR surface. Partial replacement of CTAB was qualitatively confirmed in many of these cases, but the exact surface composition of nanorods and the amount of residual CTAB was either unknown or not possible to determine.…”

Applications of gold nanorods in biomedical imaging and related fields

“…GNRs as a nonviral gene delivery vector have been attracted much interest recently [55][56][57]. Takahashi et al [58] investigated phosphatidylcholine-modified GNRs for releasing plasmid DNA.…”