In Vivo Renal Clearance, Biodistribution, Toxicity of Gold nanoclusters

TL;DR

This study compares GSH- and BSA-protected gold nanoclusters, showing GSH-protected ones have higher renal clearance, lower toxicity, and better potential for in vivo imaging and therapy, unlike BSA-protected clusters which accumulate in liver and spleen.

Contribution

It provides detailed in vivo analysis of renal clearance, biodistribution, and toxicity of different gold nanoclusters, highlighting the advantages of GSH-protected nanoclusters for biomedical applications.

Findings

GSH-protected nanoclusters achieve 36% renal clearance after 24 hours.

GSH-protected nanoclusters metabolize 94% of gold in 28 days.

BSA-protected nanoclusters cause persistent toxicity and accumulate in liver and spleen.

Abstract

Gold nanoparticles have shown great prospective in cancer diagnosis and therapy, but they can not be metabolized and prefer to accumulate in liver and spleen due to their large size. The gold nanoclusters with small size can penetrate kidney tissue and have promise to decrease in vivo toxicity by renal clearance. In this work, we explore the in vivo renal clearance, biodistribution, and toxicity responses of the BSA- and GSH-protected gold nanoclusters for 24 hours and 28 days. The BSA-protected gold nanoclusters have low-efficient renal clearance and only 1% of gold can be cleared, but the GSH-protected gold nanoclusters have high-efficient renal clearance and 36 % of gold can be cleared after 24 hours. The biodistribution further reveals that 94% of gold can be metabolized for the GSH-protected nanoclusters, but only less than 5% of gold can be metabolized for the BSA-protected nanoclusters after 28 days. Both of the GSH- and BSA-protected gold nanoclusters cause acute infection, inflammation, and kidney function damage after 24 hours, but these toxicity responses for the GSH-protected gold nanoclusters can be eliminated after 28 days. Immune system can also be affected by the two kinds of gold nanoclusters, but the immune response for the GSH-protected gold nanoclusters can also be recovered after 28 days. These findings show that the GSH-protected gold nanoclusters have small size and can be metabolized by renal clearance and thus the toxicity can be significantly decreased. The BSA- protected gold nanoclusters, however, can form large compounds and further accumulate in liver and spleen which can cause irreparable toxicity response. Therefore, the GSH-protected gold nanoclusters have great potential for in vivo imaging and therapy, and the BSA-protected gold nanoclusters can be used as the agent of liver cancer therapy.