Engineering Gold Nanoparticle As Novel Transfection Agent

Lung cancer is one of the spreadest and deadliest disease within tumoral cases. In 2020 among all cancer types it was second in the number of diagnosed cases and first for the number of deaths. Today, although different new treatments have been set into the clinical strategies, improving the overall survival, the mortality is still high and further efforts are needed to improve the therapeutical effects of nowadays options. Recently, immunotherapy has gained interest incuring cancer disease and nowadays some treatment for lung cancer include antibodies. Another tested immuno-based therapy action are the cancer vaccines, which are used to help stimulate the immune system by transfecting specific anti-tumor antigen, leading to the regression of the tumoral mass by the bioengineering of the immunological cells within the tumoral environment. The present thesis aims to generate a nano-system made of a metallic core, functionalized with a transferable gene and encapsulated into an exosome vesicle, to prove the exosome's capability to be an effective carrier in gene delivery. The synthesis of gold NPs and their modification with a positive peptide have been performed, while the overall results are limited to the interaction between the golden core and the genetic material used for transfection. Data analysis shows a bigger size than required and no stability of the nano-complex, thus no exosome encapsulation has been tested and further efforts are needed to establish a stable and efficient transfecting system. Nevertheless the obtained results are not as expected, in the future is possible tomodify the used strategy to create and build a platform able to interact with immune cancer cells, empowering their response against the tumoral mass.