ISBN 9783843942584

978-3-8439-4258-4, Reihe Physikalische Chemie

Lisa Prisner
Targeted Delivery of Gold Nanoparticles for Biological Application

169 Seiten, Dissertation Universität Hamburg (2019), Softcover, A5

Zusammenfassung / Abstract

In this thesis, the application of the IL-6R specific RNA-aptamer AIR-3A as an affinity molecule for the targeted delivery of gold nanoparticles to IL-6 receptor-carrying cells was investigated. The efficiency and specificity of the targeted delivery was optimized for a variety of parameters including nanoparticle design and functionalization, incubation parameters and concentration dependence. In detail, the dependence on the particle size as well as the amount of specific affinity molecules on the surface was investigated in order to find the most efficient variant for gold particle accumulation in the cells for a given particle concentration.

This aptamer-mediated delivery system was compared to the more classical approach using an antibody-mediated delivery system targeting the same receptor, and it could be determined that the Aptamer-mediated system does not show any loss in performance in comparison to the antibody, and even shows a better performance for physiological temperatures for most particle sizes. It was found that the suitability of these two molecules is largely dependent on the type of gold particles used as well as the desired application.

The capability of the aptamer to bind to the receptor when conjugated to gold nanoparticles was investigated and compared to a fluorescently labeled aptamer in order to ascertain the effect the conjugation to nanoparticles has on the receptor-aptamer interaction.

Lastly this aptamer-based delivery system was exploited for the use in targeted plasmonic photothermal therapy using spherical gold nanoparticles as well as elongated gold nanorods. In these experiments, single cells with accumulated gold nanoparticles were irradiated and the cell death was visualized over a period of time. Effects of targeted delivery of the particles on the efficiency of the plasmonic photothermal therapy was investigated.