READY-TO-USE ONE-POT SYNTHESIS OF SURFACE-DECORATED GOLD NANOPARTICLES WITH TARGETING ATTRIBUTES

Gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) can be used in diagnostic and therapeutic applications, and the development of facile and fast synthetic approaches is accordingly desirable. We report a practical one-pot method for the synthesis in aqueous media of surface-decorated AuNPs with enhanced biological responses.1 Gold ions could be reduced using only polyethyleneimine (PEI) derivatives containing sugar and-or alkyl chains acting simultaneously as reducing and stabilizing agent, and without the aid of any other mediator.2 The process is possibly potentialized by the presence of the amino groups. The kinetics of AuNPs nucleation and growth depends on the chemical nature of the polymer chains. Particularly, the presence of lactose moieties conjugated to the PEI chains conducted to surface-decorated AuNPs with low cytotoxicity that are remarkably faster uptaken by HepG2 cells, which overexpress asialoglycoprotein, a galactose receptor. These findings may kick off significant advances towards the practical and ready-to-use manufacturing of functionalized AuNPs for cell targeting since the methodology is applicable for a large variety of other ligands that can be conjugated to the same polymer chains.