Fig. 4
Cytotoxicity assay after cell surface labelling with pH-sensitive AuNP. a MTT assay results reported as percentage of living cells with respect to the average of the control samples. Both MKN28 and HepG2 labelled with AuNP do not show statistically significant difference with respect to their controls (two-tailed unpaired t test, p < 0.05, n = 3 independent experiments, error bars show the standard deviation from the mean). b Bright-field, c Hoechst nuclei dye fluorescence, d PI dye fluorescence, and e merged fluorescence images collected from the same location of a control sample of MKN28. Similarly, f–i report the images collected from an AuNP treated MKN28 sample, respectively. The region inside the dotted white circle show the occurrence of nuclei fragmentation during cell mitosis, which represents an additional proof of normal physiological activity of the cells. Scale bars: 20 µm. Source data are provided as a Source Data file. Source data
