ReviewTargeting dendritic cells through gold nanoparticles: A review on the cellular uptake and subsequent immunological properties

- Gold NPs as potential tool in immunotherapies due to their customizable size and shape, surface functionalization and unique optical properties.
- Manipulation of gold NPs to target DCs for immunotherapies and vaccine development.
- Gold NPs affect DCs maturation and their subsequent cytokine secretion and T cell priming.
- Variations in the effects of gold NPs in human DCs are due to their size, shape and surface chemistry.
- Gold NPs are biocompatible and possess low toxicity towards DCs.

Gold nanoparticles (NPs) have been proposed as a highly potential tool in immunotherapies due to its advantageous properties including customizable size and shapes, surface functionality and biocompatibility. Dendritic cells (DCs), the sentinels of immune response, have been of interest to be manipulated by using gold NPs for targeted delivery of immunotherapeutic agent. Researches done especially in human DCs showed a variation of gold NPs effects on cellular uptake and internalization, DC maturation and subsequent T cells priming as well as cytotoxicity. In this review, we describe the synthesis and physiochemical properties of gold NPs as well as the importance of gold NPs in immunotherapies through their actions on human DCs.