The nanotoxicity investigation of optical nanoparticles to cultured cells in vitro

Optical nanoparticles (NPs) have the potential to provide new tools for diagnosis and treatment of human diseases, however, their nanotoxicity and biological characteristics are still unclear. Here, we prepared a series of typical NPs (including gold nanospheres, gold nanorods, silver nanopheres, silver triangular nanoplates and quantum dots) with different material and surface chemical modification for nanotoxicity test. Cell proliferation was investigated by SRB assay where the NPs were co-cultured with cancer cells. It was found that NPs’ toxicity was highly correlated to different factors—material selection, physical size/surface area, shape, and surface chemical property, etc. This work has the potential to provide a uniform and systematic information when they are applied as probes in biological and medical fields.