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Abstract
Gold nanoparticles have shown great prospective in cancer diagnosis and therapy, but
they can not be metabolized and prefer to accumulate in liver and spleen due to their
large size. The gold nanoclusters with small size can penetrate kidney tissue and
have promise to decrease in vivo toxicity by renal clearance. In this work, we explore
the in vivo renal clearance, biodistribution, and toxicity responses of the BSA- and
GSH-protected gold nanoclusters for 24 h and 28 days. The BSA-protected gold nanoclusters
have low-efficient renal clearance and only 1% of gold can be cleared, but the GSH-protected
gold nanoclusters have high-efficient renal clearance and 36% of gold can be cleared
after 24 h. The biodistribution further reveals that 94% of gold can be metabolized
for the GSH-protected nanoclusters, but only less than 5% of gold can be metabolized
for the BSA-protected nanoclusters after 28 days. Both of the GSH- and BSA-protected
gold nanoclusters cause acute infection, inflammation, and kidney function damage
after 24 h, but these toxicity responses for the GSH-protected gold nanoclusters can
be eliminated after 28 days. Immune system can also be affected by the two kinds of
gold nanoclusters, but the immune response for the GSH-protected gold nanoclusters
can also be recovered after 28 days. These findings show that the GSH-protected gold
nanoclusters have small size and can be metabolized by renal clearance and thus the
toxicity can be significantly decreased. The BSA-protected gold nanoclusters, however,
can form large compounds and further accumulate in liver and spleen which can cause
irreparable toxicity response. Therefore, the GSH-protected gold nanoclusters have
great potential for in vivo imaging and therapy, and the BSA-protected gold nanoclusters
can be used as the agent of liver cancer therapy.