Ligand Ratio Plays a Critical Role in the Design of Optimal Multifunctional Gold Nanoclusters for Targeted Gastric Cancer Therapy

Insights into the Interactions of Peptides with Monolayer-Protected Metal Nanoclusters

Monolayer-protected atomically precise metal nanoclusters (MPCs) have potential applications in catalysis, imaging, and drug delivery. Understanding their interactions with biomolecules such as peptides is of paramount interest for their use in cell imaging and drug delivery. Here we have carried out atomistic molecular dynamics simulations to investigate the interactions between MPCs and an anticancer peptide, melittin. Melittin gets attached to the MPCs surface by the formation of multiple hydrogen bonds between its amino acid residues with MPCs ligands. Additionally, the positively charged Lys, Arg, and peptide's N-terminal strongly anchor the peptide to the MPC metal surface, providing extra stabilization.

A Review on Gold Nanoclusters for Cancer Phototherapy

Cancer phototherapy, including photodynamic therapy (PDT) and photothermal therapy (PTT), has been extensively studied in recent years because of its noninvasive properties, high efficiency, improved selectivity, and reduced side effects. Gold nanoclusters (AuNCs) have the advantages of high biocompatibility, high biosafety, excellent photoresponse, and high tumor penetration ability. This review analyzes the use of AuNCs in tumor phototherapy in recent years from three aspects, namely, AuNCs in PDT, AuNCs in PTT, and AuNCs in combination therapy, and presents the high potential of AuNCs in cancer phototherapy. This review aims to provide readers with the unique advantages, diversified application approaches, and bright application prospects of AuNCs in phototherapy and to provide insights into strategies for applying AuNCs to tumor phototherapy.

Effects of Diglyme on Au Nanocluster Formation: Mechanism, 1H NMR, and Bonding

Recently, diglyme was applied as a solvent in the synthesis of a luminescent gold-thiolate nanocluster. However, the interactions between the diglyme and the gold nanocluster and the intrinsic mechanism of the diglyme-assisted nanocluster growth have not been examined. In this work, we use density functional theory (DFT) to propose a plausible pathway for diglyme-assisted Au(I)-thiolate synthesis; the reaction energies are found to be negative in every step. ¹H NMR calculations are applied to characterize how the environment arising from different gold motifs affects the chemical shifts of the protons on diglyme, which experience strong downfield shifts. Extended transition state-natural orbitals for chemical valence (ETS-NOCV) theory is also utilized to examine the interactions between diglyme and gold clusters as well as a Au₂₀(SR)₁₅ nanocluster. Our work demonstrates that diglyme can play an important role in the synthetic mechanism yielding gold nanoclusters and provides insights into the diglyme-nanocluster binding motifs and resulting NMR chemical shifts.