Synthesis, Photothermal Effect and Cytotoxicity of Fe3O4@Au Nanocomposites.

ABSTRACT

It is currently a very active research area to develop multifunctional nanocomposites (NCs) which integrate the novel properties from various nanomaterials for multimodal imaging and simultaneous therapy. These theranostic nanoplatforms can provide complementary information from each imaging modality for accurate diagnosis and, at the same time, afford an imaging-guided focused tumor therapy. Among them, core/shell Fe3O4@Au NCs have attracted wide attention due to their unique advantages in magnetic targeting, multimodal imaging and photothermal therapy. This study developed a layer-by-layer assembling approach to synthesize Fe3O4@Au NCs with high photothermal conversion efficiency. The as-synthesized NCs showed significant photothermal ablation capability to HeLa cells in vitro under near infrared laser irradiation. To ensure the safety for medical applications, the bio-effects of Fe3O4@Au NCs on RAW264.7 cells were carefully assessed, in terms of cell viability, oxidative stress and apoptosis. We have demonstrated that Fe3O4@Au NCs had good biocompatibility in RAW264.7 cells and no significant cytotoxicity was found. Therefore, the Fe3O4@Au NCs synthesized in this study have great potential as an ideal candidate for CT/MR imaging and photothermal therapy.