Cold Plasma Accelerates the Uptake of Gold Nanoparticles Into Glioblastoma Cells

The gold nanoparticles and cold plasma have been widely investigated separately in cancer therapy. In this paper, the two agents were combined in order to achieve a more profound understanding of their interactions in glioblastoma (U87) and normal human astrocytes (E6/E7). Gold nanoparticles were endocytosed at an accelerated rate in the U87 cell membrane due to the plasma treatment. This caused many divots across the cell membrane which made it more porous. On the contrary, in E6/E7 cells, there was no significant difference for penetration of gold nanoparticles or the cell membrane morphology. As proven in previous experiments the addition of the nanoparticles decrease cell viability, allowing the cold plasma to be more efficient. Present work demonstrated the synergistic effect of the two agents, which can be correlated in order to maximize the efficiency.