Fabrication of gold nanochains with octreotide acetate template

Abstract

We described a facile method for assembly gold nanochains by using octreotide acetate as template in aqueous environment. In acidic solution, octreotide acetate was conferred positive charges and its structure changed to chain-like. The monodisperse negative gold nanoparticles were bound to the surface of octreotide acetate template by electrostatic attraction and the interaction of gold nanoparticles with amino acid residues (tryptophan and lysine). The fabricated gold nanostructure presented chain-like observed by transmission electron microscopy. The cytotoxicity of gold nanochains was examined by tetrazolium dye-based microtitration (MTT) assay, which demonstrated significantly less toxicity than that of octreotide acetate alone. The MTT assay also reflected the combinative action between the gold nanoparticles with octreotide acetate. Our work lays the groundwork for developing octreotide acetate-templated nanomaterials that can be used as a building block for the creation of nanomaterials. Meanwhile, the harmfulless gold nanochains have great application prospects in the biomedical filed. © 2013 Jing Zhou et al.