Photothermal tumor ablation might be carried out with multibranched gold nanoparticles (MBAuNPs) having maximum absorbance (A_max) in the infrared region and functionalized with ligands that would bind them to the target tumor markers. However, in nanomedicine applications, the nanostructures must reach their target tissues to be effective, but the corona of serum proteins they instantaneously acquire when administered by intravenous injection may affect their activity; for this reason, we decided to analyze the effect that exposing MBAuNPs to bovine serum albumin (BSA) and human serum (HS) have on their protein corona and physical properties. The synthesized spherical Au seeds stoichiometrically generate piñata-like MBAuNPs of 8–20 peaks potentially useful for photothermal tumor ablation since they induce hyperthermia of more than 4 °C in phantom gels mimicking the skin irradiated with an 808 nm laser at 0.75 W/cm². The calculated surface area of MBAuNPs ranges from 24 984 nm² to 40 669 nm², depending on the number of peaks we use for modeling the NPs. When MBAuNPs are exposed to BSA, they acquire a protein corona with an internal “hard” portion composed by one or two layers of BSA containing ∼1000–4000 molecules covalently bound to their surface, and an external “soft” portion formed by agglomerated BSA molecules linked by non-covalent bonds. Functionalization with BSA decreases the tendency of MBAuNPs to agglomerate and increases their size dispersion. MBAuNPs and MBAuNPs–BSA exposed to HS bind HS albumin and other HS proteins ranging from 25 kDa to 180 kDa that increase their hydrodynamic diameter and decrease their stability. We conclude that MBAuNPs exposed to serum albumin and HS instantaneously acquire a hard and soft protein corona that may affect prior or subsequent functionalization aiming to direct them to specific cell or tissue targets.

中文翻译：

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涂有血清蛋白的多支金纳米颗粒适合光热肿瘤消融

可以使用在红外区具有最大吸光度（A _max）的多支金纳米颗粒（MBAuNPs）进行光热消融，并用能将它们与靶肿瘤标记物结合的配体进行功能化。然而，在纳米药物应用中，纳米结构必须到达其靶组织才能有效，但是当通过静脉注射给药时，它们瞬间获得的血清蛋白的日冕可能会影响其活性。因此，我们决定分析将MBAuNPs暴露于牛血清白蛋白（BSA）和人血清（HS）对蛋白质日冕和物理性质的影响。合成的球形金种子化学计量生成Piñata样的MBAuNPs的8–20个峰可能对光热肿瘤消融有用，因为它们在模拟0.75 W / cm ²的808 nm激光照射的皮肤的幻象凝胶中诱导超过4°C的高温。MBAuNPs的计算表面积为24984 nm ²至40669 nm ²，这取决于我们用于NP建模的峰数。当MBAuNPs暴露于BSA时，它们会获得蛋白质电晕，其内部“硬”部分由一层或两层BSA组成，这些BSA含有约1000-4000个共价结合在其表面上的分子，而外部“软”部分则由团聚的BSA形成通过非共价键连接的分子。使用BSA进行功能化可降低MBAuNP凝聚的趋势，并增加其尺寸分散度。暴露于HS的MBAuNP和MBAuNP-BSA结合HS白蛋白和其他25 kDa至180 kDa的HS蛋白，从而增加了它们的流体动力学直径并降低了其稳定性。