Fabrication of gold nanocages and nanoshells using lanreotide acetate and a comparison study of their photothermal antitumor therapy

Abstract

Gold nanostructures, particularly gold nanocages or nanoshells (AuNCs or AuNSs), exhibit remarkable optical properties due to their excellent surface plasmon resonance, allowing their potential use in biomedical fields. Herein, we report the controlled synthesis of AuNCs and AuNSs simply using lanreotide acetate (Lan) as a biotemplate. Gold nanomaterials were obtained via co-incubation between a HAuCl₄ solution and Lan peptide and controlling the reduction reaction process. AuNCs and AuNSs prepared in this method were about 120 nm and 150 nm in diameter, respectively, which have the desired passive targeting to tumor. Surprisingly, both AuNCs and AuNSs showed superior photothermal inhibitory effects for cancer cells with only 0.8 W cm⁻² laser power in the in vivo and vitro experiments; moreover, the AuNCs showed better antitumor activity and photothermal conversion efficiency than the AuNSs. In this study, two kinds of gold nanostructures were fabricated using the same template molecule, and AuNCs showed higher photothermal conversion efficiency due to their anisotropic structure.