The work presented here describes the fabrication of a novel drug delivery system, which consists of gold nanorods and doxorubicin, with the attachment of thioctic acid and folic acid, for the targeted release of drug to cancer cells. Doxorubicin, the potent anticancer drug, is widely used to treat various cancers. Gold nanorods were functionalized chemically to generate active groups for the attachment of drug molecules and subsequently attached to folic acid. The resulting nanostructure was characterized by UV-visible-NIR spectrophotometry, TEM techniques, zeta potential measurement and subsequently used to target folate receptor-expressing cancers cells for the delivery of doxorubicin. We generated a release profile for the release of doxorubicin from the nanostructures in KB cells using single-molecule fluorescence intensity images and fluorescence lifetime images. The results indicated that the nanorods were able to enter the target cells because of the attachment of folic acid and used as a carriers for the targeted delivery of doxorubicin.
