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Updated: Mar 7, 2026
09:17
Assembly of Gold Nanorods into Chiral Plasmonic Metamolecules Using DNA Origami Templates
Published on: March 5, 2019
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A Singlet Oxygen Generating Agent by Chirality-dependent Plasmonic Shell-Satellite Nanoassembly.
Fengli Gao1,2, Maozhong Sun1,2, Wei Ma1,2
1State Key Lab of Food Science and Technology, Jiangnan University, Wuxi, Jiangsu, 214122, P. R. China.
Advanced Materials (Deerfield Beach, Fla.)
|February 24, 2017
Summary
Chiral gold nanoassemblies act as effective photodynamic therapy (PDT) agents, generating singlet oxygen (1 O2) for cancer treatment and enabling simultaneous tumor imaging via X-ray CT and photoacoustics.
Area of Science:
- Nanotechnology
- Biomedical Engineering
- Photochemistry
Background:
- Photodynamic therapy (PDT) utilizes photosensitizers to generate singlet oxygen (1 O2) for therapeutic applications.
- Developing novel photosensitizers with enhanced efficiency and imaging capabilities is crucial for advancing PDT.
Purpose of the Study:
- To fabricate DNA-driven shell-satellite (SS) gold assemblies as chiral photosensitizers.
- To investigate the chiroplasmonic properties and singlet oxygen generation efficiency of these nanoassemblies.
- To evaluate their efficacy as a multifunctional platform for cancer diagnosis and therapy.
Main Methods:
- Fabrication of DNA-driven shell-satellite (SS) gold assemblies.
- Surface functionalization with cysteine enantiomers to induce chirality.
- Characterization of chiroplasmonic activities and singlet oxygen quantum yield.
- In vitro and in vivo evaluation of PDT efficacy and tumor imaging using X-ray computed tomography (CT) and photoacoustics (PA).
Main Results:
- The fabricated chiral SS nanoassemblies exhibited intense chiroplasmonic activities (-40.2 ± 2.6 mdeg).
- High reactive oxygen species generating efficiency was observed, with a 1 O2 quantum yield of 1.09.
- Effective in vitro and in vivo photodynamic therapy and simultaneous tumor imaging (CT/PA) were achieved using the chiral SS nanoassemblies under right circular polarized light.
Conclusions:
- Enantiomer-dependent and structure-induced chiral nanoassemblies are effective for PDT.
- These multifunctional chiral nanostructures offer a promising platform for simultaneous cancer diagnosis and therapy.
- This research opens new avenues for utilizing chiral nanostructures in cancer treatment and imaging.
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