Evaluating Single Cell DNA Damage Induced by Enhanced Radiation on Gold Nanofilm Patch.

Although radiotherapy is a general oncology treatment and often synergistically applied with surgery and chemotherapy, it can cause side effect during and after treatment. Gold nanoparticle was studied as a potential material to enhance radiation to induce damage in cancer cells. But few studies are conducted to examine the effects of gold nanofilm on cell impairment under X-ray treatment. This paper described a micro-fabrication based single cell array platform to evaluate DNA damage induced by enhanced X-ray radiation on gold nanofilm patches (GNFPes). Cancer cells were patterned on different diameter and thickness of GNFPes, where each cell was attached on one GNFP. The end-point DNA damage induced by X-ray was examined in situ at single cell level using halo assay. The preliminary data demonstrated that the enhancement of DNA damage was significantly related to the area and thickness of the GNFP. This platform may be hopefully used to establish the mathematic relation among DNA damage, X-ray dosage, thickness and area of GNFP, and further contribute to radiation dosage screening for personalized radiotherapy.