Identifying Trends in Gold Nanoparticle Toxicity and Uptake: Size, Shape, Capping Ligand, and Biological Corona

The drive behind the growing interest in understanding gold nanoparticle (AuNP) cytotoxicity originates from the promise of AuNPs for diverse biological applications across the fields of drug delivery, biosensing, biological imaging, gene therapy, and photothermal therapy. Although we continue to investigate the novel biomedical applications of AuNPs, progress is currently stalled at the periphery of understanding the forces that govern critical nano–bio interactions. In this work, we systematically probe the size, shape, and surface capping effects of nanogold by designing a set of eight unique AuNPs. This allowed us to undertake a systematic study involving each of these parameters in the context of their influence on the cytotoxicity and cellular uptake by human prostate cancer cells (PC3) as a model biological system. While studying the influence of these parameters, our study also investigated the influence of serum proteins in forming different levels of biological corona on AuNPs, thereby further i...