A Quantitative In Vitro Approach to Study the Intracellular Fate of Gold Nanoparticles: From Synthesis to Cytotoxicity

Due to their physico-chemical characteristics, gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) seem to be suitable for biomedical and therapeutic applications even if conflicting data on their toxicological profiles are present in literature. In order to better understand if AuNPs could be safe we must consider different biological endpoints such as cytotoxicity, genotoxicity, inflammation and biopersistence. Starting from these considerations, one of the first issues to be assessed is to better understand if AuNPs can be internalized by cells. In this work, we propose a methodological approach to radioactivate AuNPs by neutron activation and the quantification of their internalization by two in vitro cell syst…