Preparation of adenovirus-templated gold nanoshells and a study of their photothermal therapy efficacy

Abstract

A novel biotemplating method for fabricating gold nanoshells (AuNSs) through direct co-incubation of AuCl₃ solution and an adenovirus shuttle vector-GFP (Adv) template in water, followed by the reduction of the mixture using fresh NaBH₄, has been investigated in this paper. For comparison, different adenovirus-templated gold nanoshells (Adv-AuNSs) were prepared by modifying Adv with chitosan or changing the ionic conditions of the reaction system. The morphology and structure of the prepared AuNSs were characterized using transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). The result indicated that Adv-AuNSs prepared by co-incubation of naked Adv and 7.5 mM AuCl₃ solution had a uniform structure of approximately 120 nm diameter and face-centered cubic (fcc) crystal structure in the XRD pattern. A study of the biocompatibility of the prepared Adv-AuNSs demonstrated that there was no significant cytotoxicity. In addition, the photothermal therapy efficacy of the Adv-AuNSs on tumor cells was investigated in detail, revealing that all tumor cells could be killed when the power of near-infrared light irradiation was 4 W cm⁻². Therefore, the prepared Adv-AuNSs will have very promising applications in the photothermal therapy of tumors.