Abstract
With the aim of making specific targeting of silver nanoparticles as a drug for tumor cells and developing new anticancer agents, a novel nano-composite was developed. Albumin coated silver nanoparticles (ASNPs) were synthesized, and their anti-cancerous effects were evaluated against MDA-MB 231, a human breast cancer cell line. The synthesized ASNPs were characterized by spectroscopic methods. The morphological changes of the cells were observed by inverted, florescent microscopy and also by DNA ladder pattern on gel electrophoresis; the results revealed that the cell death process occurred through the apoptosis mechanism. It was found that ASNPs with a size of 90 nm and negatively charged with a zeta-potential of about −20 mV could be specifically taken up by tumor cells. The LD50 of ASNPs against MDA-MB 231 (5 μM), was found to be 30 times higher than that for white normal blood cells (152 μM). The characteristics of the synthesized ASNPs included; intact structure of coated albumin, higher cytotoxicity against cancer cells than over normal cells, and cell death based on apoptosis and reduction of gland tumor sizes in mice. This work indicates that ASNPs could be a good candidate for chemotherapeutic drug.
Highlights
The discovery and development of new anticancer agents are crucial to prevent side effects and drug resistance problems caused by current available treatments[1]
Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and SEM images of SNPs (Fig. 1A and B) revealed SNPs were formed spherically and the particle-size histogram obtained by Dynamic light scattering (DLS) (Fig. 1C) indicated that SNPs vary in size from 4.1 to 7.7 nm with mean diameter of 4.6 nm
The statistical data regarding the size of the Albumin coated silver nanoparticles (ASNPs) based on TEM image (Fig. 2) showed: 1- for p < 0.002, size of nanoparticles is 90 nm with n = 37 numbers, that parameter of n refers to numbers of nanoparticles in this slice, 2- for p < 0.03, size of nanoparticles is 120 nm with n = 10 numbers, and 3- for p < 0.02, size of nanoparticles is 50 nm with n = 22 numbers
Summary
The discovery and development of new anticancer agents are crucial to prevent side effects and drug resistance problems caused by current available treatments[1]. Treatment of advanced breast cancer is faced with serious challenges, such as dormant micro-metastases, resistance to all systemic therapies, triple-negative breast cancer, genomic chaos, and transformed ER- and HER2-positive breast cancer This type of treatment is not amenable to the targeted therapies, and may cause a progressive increase in symptomatic central nervous system (CNS) relapses that are not controlled by standard monoclonal antibody therapies[2]. Albumin nanoparticles have recently attracted interest of pharmacologists as anticancer drug carrier systems[15]. These nanoparticles make specific targeting of drugs to tumor cells possible; this leads to less toxic effects on non-cancerous cells by enhancing endocytic uptake of drugs via two mechanisms[15]: successful www.nature.com/scientificreports/. An albumin-carried drug appears to be absorbed by cancer cells more than by normal cells
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