Intracellular uptake, transport, and processing of nanostructures in cancer cells

Nanotechnology has been used to provide advanced biomedical research tools in imaging and therapy, which requires targeting of nanoparticles (NPs) to individual cells subcellular compartments. However, a complete understanding of the intracellular transport, and subcellular distribution of nanostructured materials remains limited. Hence, NPs were explored as a model system to study the intracellular behavior of NPs in real time. results show that the cellular uptake of gold NPs is dependent on their size and surface The NPs were transported in vesicles of 300-500 nm diameter within the cytoplasm. The velocity and diffusion coefficient of the vesicles containing NPs were 10.2 (+/- 1.8) mu m/hr and (+/- 0.52) mu m(2)/hr, respectively. Analysis of the time-dependent intracellular spatial distribution the NPs demonstrated that they reside in lysosomes (final degrading organelles) within 40 of incubation. These findings can be used to tailor nanoscale devices for effective cell and delivery. (C) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.