Methods for monitoring and imaging nanoparticles in cells

摘要

Successful targeting nanoparticles (NP) to specific cells requires reliable feedback about NP accumulation in cells. This task is a challenge for all optical methods due the size of NP and diffraction limit of optical devices. We modified several microscopy-based techniques for imaging and measuring NP in individual cells: photothermal, fluorescent, electron and atomic-force microscopies and flow cytometry. All those techniques were applied for quantitative analysis and imaging of interaction of gold NP (10 and 30 nm) with living tumor cells. Based on experimental results we performed comparison of all methods in terms of sensitivity, speed, sample requirements etc. We have found that standard microscopes may detect NP and their clusters in individual living cells through imaging NP-related thermal, fluorescent and other phenomena.