Plasmonic imaging of human oral cancer cell communities during programmed cell death by nuclear-targeting silver nanoparticles.

Plasmonic nanoparticles (NPs) have become a useful platform in medicine for potential uses in disease diagnosis and treatment. Recently, it has been reported that plasmonic NPs conjugated to nuclear-targeting peptides cause DNA damage and apoptotic populations in cancer cells. In the present work, we utilized the plasmonic scattering property and the ability of nuclear-targeted silver nanoparticles (NLS/RGD-AgNPs) to induce programmed cell death in order to image in real-time the behavior of human oral squamous carcinoma (HSC-3) cell communities during and after the induction of apoptosis. Plasmonic live-cell imaging revealed that HSC-3 cells behave as nonprofessional phagocytes. The induction of apoptosis in some cells led to attraction of and their subsequent engulfment by neighboring cells. Attraction to apoptotic cells resulted in clustering of the cellular community. Live-cell imaging also revealed that, as the initial concentration of NLS/RGD-AgNPs increases, the rate of self-killing increases and the degree of attraction and clustering decreases. These results are discussed in terms of the proposed mechanism of cells undergoing programmed cell death.