Mechanical cell behaviour alteration triggered by inorganic NPs and cancer thermal therapy using gold core/shell NPs.

Metal oxide NPs are largely used in medicine applications due to their unique physicochemical properties. However, there are many worries regard their toxicity especially from a mechanical viewpoint. Cell mechanics is a critical factor of cell health regulating physiological phenomena. The cell elasticity perturbation in two cancer cell lines (namely intestinal and alveolar) exposed to $SiO_{2}NPs$ and $TiO_{2}NPs$ were reported. Cell Young's modulus measurements showed different values in the two cell lines demonstrating the strong correlation between the elasticity alterations and NPs toxicity. Then, the cell mechanics analysis following NP exposure, could represent a new protocol to evaluate the safety of NPs predicting any complications triggered by NPs. Finally, since the inorganic NPs group includes also noble metals, a green protocol was developed to obtain AuNPs with a polyphenols shell, which do not induce macrophages activation. At $43 {^{\circ}C}$ (the temperature used to treat cancer cells by thermotherapy), the polyphenol-shelled AuNPs behave as heat synergized tools in the thermal treatment of two types of cancer cell, breast and neuroblastoma due to the high Au thermal conductivity.