Cancer Specific Targeting by Glucosamine Coated Gold Nanoparticles In Vitro and In Vivo

In this article, we describe a simple method of coating D-(+)-Glucosamine hydrochloride (GlcN) onto gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) by noncovalent binding. The as-prepared AuNPs-GlcN exhibits outstanding properties such as stability, tumor specificity and non-cytoxicity. Tumor cell and tissue-specific targeting by AuNPs-GlcN nanoconjugates were successfully demonstrated in this work. In the colocalization experiment, the AuNPs-GlcN entered tumor cells through receptor-mediated endocytosis. Our strategy provides an efficient method for preparing AuNPs based targeting vectors, which has the potential to be used for tumor specific diagnosis and therapy.