AntiCD44 antibody-conjugated gold nanoparticles for targeted photothermal therapy of endometriotic cells

VOLPINI, CRISTINA, Nora Bloise, Claudio Casali, Benedetta Albini, Mattia Dominoni, Fabio Barra, Marco Biggiogera, Pietro Galinetto, Bárbara Gardella, Valerio Gaetano Vellone, Simone Ferrero, Paolo Minzioni, Visai, Livia
Biomaterials science · 2025 · vol. 13(18) , pp. 5164–5183 · doi:10.1039/d5bm00701a · PMID:40813270
other OA: hybrid CC-BY-NC-4.0
🔓 Open OA copy Full text JSON View on PubMed View at publisher
⚙ AI-generated summary by claude@2026-06, 2026-06-08 ⓘ

AntiCD44 antibody-conjugated gold nanostars effectively targeted and reduced endometriotic cell viability via photothermal therapy, demonstrating potential for less invasive endometriosis treatment.

One-sentence paraphrase of the abstract; not a substitute for reading it. No clinical advice. How this works

⚙ AI-generated deep summary by claude@2026-06, 2026-06-09 · read from full text ⓘ

The study developed anti-CD44 antibody-conjugated gold nanoparticle nanosystems to target CD44+ endometriotic cells and assess their photothermal therapy (PTT) effects. AuNPs were stabilized with LA-PEG-Mal and decorated with antiCD44 via maleimide chemistry, with physicochemical and biochemical assays confirming antibody presence; in vitro testing used CD44-overexpressing 12Z cells, low-expressing HESC endometriotic cells, and NIH-3T3 normal fibroblasts. After clathrin-mediated endocytosis, PTT was evaluated using two laser types with different AuNP localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) properties, showing significant efficacy against 12Z cells; gold nanostars (GNS@P_AbCD44) required lower energy than gold nanoparticles (GNP@P_AbCD44), and apoptosis was reported as the dominant cell death pathway rather than necrosis. This paper is centrally about endometriosis — it specifically targets CD44(+) endometriotic cells using antiCD44-conjugated gold nanoparticle photothermal therapy.

Read from the paper's body, not the abstract. Not a substitute for reading the paper. No clinical advice. How this works

Abstract

Endometriosis is a chronic gynecologic disease that needs newer and safer treatments. The proposed work aims to develop a nanosystem based on gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) to actively target human endometriosis CD44(+) cells and significantly reduce their viability by photothermal therapy (PTT). AuNPs stabilized by lipoic acid-Poly(ethylene glycol)-Maleimide (LA-PEG-Mal) (Au@P) were decorated with antiCD44 antibodies (Au@P_AbCD44) through maleimide chemistry. The physicochemical and biochemical approaches revealed the presence of the antibody on Au@P_AbCD44. The in vitro studies were conducted against overexpressing CD44 cells (12Z), low-expressing CD44 cells (HESC), and the normal fibroblast cell line (NIH-3T3). Following the internalization through the clathrin-mediated endocytosis, the PTT of the cell-internalized Au@P_AbCD44 was investigated using two distinct laser types, due to the differing Au@P's LSPR properties. Au@P_AbCD44 exhibited significant PTT efficacy against 12Z cells; however, GNS@P_AbCD44 required lower energy input compared to GNP@P_AbCD44. This enhanced performance is attributed to the LSPR-mediated photothermal conversion efficiency of GNS over GNPs.In both cases, the apoptotic pathway was selected by dying cells over necrotic cells. The results revealed a better photothermal ability of GNS@P_AbCD44 compared to GNP@P_AbCD44. Our findings highlight the clinical potential of gold nanostars as advanced photosensitizers for targeted photothermal therapy, offering a promising strategy for more effective and less invasive treatment of endometriosis.
Full text 1,942 characters · extracted from oa-doi-fallback · click to expand
AntiCD44 antibody-conjugated gold nanoparticles for targeted photothermal therapy of endometriotic cells Abstract Endometriosis is a chronic gynecologic disease that needs newer and safer treatments. The proposed work aims to develop a nanosystem based on gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) to actively target human endometriosis CD44(+) cells and significantly reduce their viability by photothermal therapy (PTT). AuNPs stabilized by lipoic acid-Poly(ethylene glycol)-Maleimide (LA-PEG-Mal) (Au@P) were decorated with antiCD44 antibodies (Au@P_AbCD44) through maleimide chemistry. The physicochemical and biochemical approaches revealed the presence of the antibody on Au@P_AbCD44. The in vitro studies were conducted against overexpressing CD44 cells (12Z), low-expressing CD44 cells (HESC), and the normal fibroblast cell line (NIH-3T3). Following the internalization through the clathrin-mediated endocytosis, the PTT of the cell-internalized Au@P_AbCD44 was investigated using two distinct laser types, due to the differing Au@P's LSPR properties. Au@P_AbCD44 exhibited significant PTT efficacy against 12Z cells; however, GNS@P_AbCD44 required lower energy input compared to GNP@P_AbCD44. This enhanced performance is attributed to the LSPR-mediated photothermal conversion efficiency of GNS over GNPs.In both cases, the apoptotic pathway was selected by dying cells over necrotic cells. The results revealed a better photothermal ability of GNS@P_AbCD44 compared to GNP@P_AbCD44. Our findings highlight the clinical potential of gold nanostars as advanced photosensitizers for targeted photothermal therapy, offering a promising strategy for more effective and less invasive treatment of endometriosis. - This article is part of the themed collections: 34th Annual Conference of the European Society for Biomaterials, an official ESB2025 collection, Biomaterials Science Recent HOT Articles and Biomaterials Science Open Access Spotlight 2025

Text is read by the "Ask this paper" AI Q&A widget below. Extraction quality varies by source — PMC NXML preserves structure cleanly, OA-HTML may include some navigation residue, and OA-PDF can have broken hyphenation. The publisher copy (via DOI) is the canonical version.

My notes (saved in your browser only)

⚙ Ask this paper AI returns verbatim quotes from the full text · source: oa-doi-fallback ⓘ

Answers must be backed by verbatim quotes from this paper's full text. Hallucinated quotes are dropped automatically; if no verbatim passage answers the question, we say so. How this works

Condition tags

endometriosis

MeSH descriptors

Endometriosis Endometriosis Endometriosis Endometriosis Endometriosis Endometriosis Endometriosis Endometriosis Endometriosis Endometriosis Endometriosis Endometriosis Gold Gold Gold Gold Gold Gold Gold Gold

Citation neighborhood (no data yet)

We don't have any in-corpus citations linked to this paper yet. This is a recent paper (2025) — citers typically take a year or two to land, and the OpenAlex reference graph may still be filling in.

Source provenance

europepmc
last seen: 2026-06-11T06:19:48.454388+00:00
pubmed
last seen: 2026-06-01T00:31:08.166930+00:00
unpaywall
last seen: 2026-05-11T08:34:28.763810+00:00
License: CC-BY-NC-4.0 · commercial use OK · attribution required
Courtesy of the U.S. National Library of Medicine