Recently, studies on the development and investigation of carbohydrate-functionalized silica nanoparticles (NPs) and their biomedicine applications such as cell-specific targeting and bioimaging has been carried out extensively. Since the number of breast cancer patients has been growing in recent years, potential NPs were being studied in this project for targeting breast cancer cells. Mannose receptors can be found on the surface of MDA-MB-231, which is a kind of human breast cancer cell line. Therefore, we decorated a cyanine 3 fluorescent dye (Cy3) and mannosides on the surface of silica NPs for the purpose of imaging and targeting. Galactoside was also introduced onto the surface of silica NPs acting as a control sample. Various sizes of silica NPs were synthesized by using different amounts of ammonium to investigate the effect of the size of NPs on the cellular uptake rate. The physical properties of these NPs were characterized by scanning electron microscope, dynamic light scattering, and their zeta potential. Cellular experiments demonstrated that mannoside-modified NPs can be uptaken by MDA-MB-231. From the experiment, we found out that the best cellular uptake rate of nanoparticle size is about 250 nm. The MTT assay showed that Man@Cy3SiO₂NPs are not cytotoxic, indicating they may have the potential for biomedical applications.

中文翻译：

---

大小偏好糖二氧化硅纳米颗粒对MDA-MB-231细胞的吸收。

近来，已经广泛地进行了对碳水化合物官能化的二氧化硅纳米颗粒（NP）的开发和研究及其生物医学应用如细胞特异性靶向和生物成像的研究。由于近年来乳腺癌患者的数量一直在增长，因此在该项目中正在研究针对乳腺癌细胞的潜在NP。在人类乳腺癌细胞系MDA-MB-231的表面可以找到甘露糖受体。因此，出于成像和靶向的目的，我们在二氧化硅NP的表面上装饰了花菁3荧光染料（Cy3）和甘露糖苷。半乳糖苷也被引入到作为对照样品的二氧化硅NP的表面上。通过使用不同量的铵合成了各种尺寸的二氧化硅NP，以研究NP尺寸对细胞摄取率的影响。这些纳米粒子的物理性质通过扫描电子显微镜，动态光散射及其ζ电位来表征。细胞实验表明，甘露糖苷修饰的NP可以被MDA-MB-231摄取。从实验中，我们发现纳米尺寸的最佳细胞摄取率约为250 nm。MTT分析表明Man @ Cy3SiO 我们发现，纳米尺寸的最佳细胞摄取速率约为250 nm。MTT分析表明Man @ Cy3SiO 我们发现，纳米尺寸的最佳细胞摄取速率约为250 nm。MTT分析表明Man @ Cy3SiO_2个NP没有细胞毒性，表明它们可能具有生物医学应用潜力。