Related Experiment Video For GLUT-1
Updated: Feb 7, 2026

Gold Nanoparticle Synthesis
Published on: July 10, 2021
Uptake mechanism of metabolic-targeted gold nanoparticles
Tamar Dreifuss1, Tal-Shachar Ben-Gal1, Katerina Shamalov2
1Faculty of Engineering & the Institutes of Nanotechnology & Advanced Materials, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel.
Aim:
To elucidate the interactions, uptake mechanisms and cytotoxicity profile of glucose-functionalized gold nanoparticles (2GF-GNPs), for expanding and advancing the recently proposed technology of metabolic-based cancer detection to a variety of cancer diseases.
Methods:
Several cell types with different metabolic features were used to assess the involvement of GLUT-1 and different endocytosis pathways in 2GF-GNP uptake, and the cytotoxicity profile of 2GF-GNPs.
Results:
Cellular uptake of 2GF-GNP strongly correlated with GLUT-1 surface expression, and occurred mainly through clathrin-mediated endocytosis. 2GF-GNPs showed no toxic effect on cell cycle and proliferation.
Conclusion:
These findings promote development of metabolic-based cancer detection technologies, and suggest that 2GF-GNPs may enable specific cancer detection in a wide range of tumors characterized by high GLUT-1 expression.
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