Gold Nanoparticle Quantitation by Whole Cell Tomography

Published

November 13, 2015

Author(s)

Aric W. Sanders, Kavita M. Jeerage, Cindi Schwartz, Alexandra Curtin, Ann C. Chiaramonti Debay

Abstract

Many proposed biomedical applications for engineered gold nanoparticles require their incorporation by mammalian cells in specific numbers and locations. Here, the number of gold nanoparticles inside of individual mammalian stem cells was characterized using fast focused ion beam-scanning electron microscopy based tomography. Enhanced optical microscopy was used to provide a multiscale map of the in vitro sample, which allows cells of interest to be identified within their local environment. Cells were then serially sectioned using a gallium ion beam and imaged using a scanning electron beam. To confirm the accuracy of single cross sections, nanoparticles in similar cross sections were imaged using transmission electron microscopy and scanning helium ion microscopy. Complete tomographic series were then used to count the nanoparticles inside of each cell and measure their spatial distribution. We investigated the influence of slice thickness on counting single particles and clusters as well as nanoparticle packing within clusters. For 60 nm citrate stabilized particles, the nanoparticle cluster packing volume is 2.15 ± 0.20 times the volume of the bare gold nanoparticles.

Citation

ACS Nano

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1021/acsnano.5b03815

Keywords

FIB-SEM Tomography, Gold Nanoparticles, Nanomedicine, STEM CELLS, 3D Cell Imaging

Citation

Sanders, A. , Jeerage, K. , Schwartz, C. , Curtin, A. and Chiaramonti, A. (2015), Gold Nanoparticle Quantitation by Whole Cell Tomography, ACS Nano, [online], https://doi.org/10.1021/acsnano.5b03815 (Accessed October 8, 2025)