MSc Defence: CELLULAR UPTAKE OF SPHERICAL GOLD NANOPARTICLES IN PC-3 CELLS: LONG-TERM EXPOSURE AND DUAL-PHASE KINETIC MODELLING
- Date
- October 04, 2023
- Time
- 11:00 AM EDT - 2:00 PM EDT
- Location
- Zoom
- Open To
- Students, Faculty, Adjunct Faculty, Staff and Post-Doctoral Fellows, guests
- Contact
- biomed@torontomu.ca
Student: Gabriela Traplin
Supervisors: Dr. Ana Pejovic-Milic and Dr. Raffi Karshafian
Abstract
Research into the cellular uptake of gold nanoparticles (AuNP) is an established area of study. However, the current literature is limited in long-term studies (>10 hours), and the applicability of mathematical uptake models. This work measured the uptake of AuNPs of 5, 10, and 20 nm diameter at concentrations of 10 and 40 µM from 0 to 48 hours in prostate adenocarcinoma PC-3 cells. Total reflection X-ray fluorescence (TXRF) spectroscopy was used for quantification due to accuracy, small sample size, and simplified sample preparation. In the number of AuNPs per cell, uptake was observed to have an inverse-relationship to AuNP size, and to increase with increasing extracellular gold concentration. The uptake kinetics across all conditions presented a similar pattern, with two plateaus. A new two-phase kinetic model of AuNP uptake was developed. This kinetic model fits the experimental data well, with R2 values ranging from 0.8298 to 0.9876.