Synthesis of 15P-conjugated PPy-modified gold nanoparticles and their application to photothermal therapy of ovarian cancer

In this work, we synthesized the polypyrrole(PPy) modified gold nanoparticles and demonstrated their negligible cytotoxicity in vitro. These nanoparticles have also been demonstrated to efficiently ablate different kinds of tumor cells in vitro under the irradiation of the near-infrared laser. When the PPy modified gold nanoparticles were conjugated with the tumor-targeted molecule of 15P(sequence: SHSWHWLPNLRHYAS), these conjugates displayed hyperthermia effects on the human ovarian cancer cell line SK-OV-3 cells in vitro under the irradiation of near-infrared laser, showing great tumor-targeted treatment efficiency. To determine the potential hyperthermia effect of PPy modified gold nanoparticles or 15P-conjugate on tumor cells in vivo, the SK-OV-3 cells were used to induce the subcutaneous tumor-bearing nude mice. The significant inhibition effects of near-infrared laser mediated PPy modified gold nanoparticles or 15P-conjugate on the tumor growth were observed. These composite results suggest that the 15P-conjugated PPy modified gold nanoparticles exhibit great biocompatibility, particularly tumor-targeted effect and the effective photothermal ablation of tumor cells, which warrants the potential therapeutic value of this conjugate for further application to the in vivo localized tumor therapy.