Cytotoxicity and gene expression in sarcoma 180 cells in response to spiky magnetoplasmonic supraparticles

Multifunctional nanoparticles (NPs) have been designed for a variety of cell imaging and therapeutic applications, and the study of their cellular interactions is crucial to the development of more efficient biomedical applications. Among current nanomaterials, concave core-shell NPs with complex angled geometries are attractive owing to their unique shape-dependent optical and physical properties as well as different tendency for cell interaction. In this study, we investigated the morphology effect of spiky gold-coated iron oxide supraparticles (Fe3O4@Au SPs) on cytotoxicity and global gene expression in sarcoma 180 cells. Cells treated for 7 days with spiky supraparticles (SPs) at concentrations up to 50 μg/mL showed >90% viability, indicating that these NPs were nontoxic. To shed light on the differences in cytotoxicity, we monitored the expression of 33,315 genes using microarray analysis of SP-treated cells. The 171 up-regulated genes and 181 down-regulated genes in spiky SP-treated cells included Il1b, Spp1, Il18, Rbp4, and Il11ra1, where these genes are mainly involved in cell proliferation, differentiation, and apoptosis. These results suggested that the spiky Fe3O4@Au SPs can induce noncytotoxicity and gene expression in tumor cells, which may be a promising cornerstone on which to base related research such as cyto-/genotoxicology of nanomaterials or the design of nanoscale drug carriers.