RT Journal Article T1 Intracellular pH-Induced Tip-to-Tip Assembly of Gold Nanorods for Enhanced Plasmonic Photothermal Therapy A1 Ahijado Guzmán, Rubén A1 Bañares Morcillo, Luis A1 Guerrero Martínez, Andrés A1 López Montero, Iván A1 Tardajos Rodríguez, Gloria María A1 González Rubio, Guillermo A1 Izquierdo, Jesús G. A1 Calzado Martín, Alicia A1 Calleja, Montserrat AB The search for efficient plasmonic photothermal therapies using nonharmful pulse laser irradiation at the near-infrared (NIR) is fundamental for biomedical cancer research. Therefore, the development of novel assembled plasmonic gold nanostructures with the aim of reducing the applied laser power density to a minimum through hot-spot-mediated cell photothermolysis is an ongoing challenge. We demonstrate that gold nanorods (Au NRs) functionalized at their tips with a pH-sensitive ligand assemble into oligomers within cell lysosomes through hydrogen-bonding attractive interactions. The unique intracellular features of the plasmonic oligomers allow us to significantly reduce the femtosecond laser power density and Au NR dose while still achieving excellent cell killing rates. The formation of gold tip-to-tip oligomers with longitudinal localized surface plasmon resonance bands at the NIR, obtained from low-aspect-ratio Au NRs close in resonance with 800 nm Ti:sapphire 90 fs laser pulses, was found to be the key parameter for realizing the enhanced plasmonic photothermal therapy. PB American Chemical Society SN 2470-1343 YR 2016 FD 2016 LK https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/23742 UL https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/23742 LA eng NO Ahijado-Guzmán R, González-Rubio G, Izquierdo JG, Bañares L, López-Montero I, Calzado-Martín A, Calleja M, Tardajos G, Guerrero-Martínez A. Intracellular pH-Induced Tip-to-Tip Assembly of Gold Nanorods for Enhanced Plasmonic Photothermal Therapy. ACS Omega. 2016 Sep 30;1(3):388-395. doi: 10.1021/acsomega.6b00184. Epub 2016 Sep 16. NO The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (ERC grant agreement n° 338133) NO Unión Europea NO Ministerio de Economía, Comercio y Empresa (España) NO Comunidad de Madrid DS Docta Complutense RD 21 abr 2025