Abstract
Cold atmospheric plasma (CAP) has been extensively investigated in the local treatment of cancer due to its potential of reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation in biological systems. In this study, we examined the synergistic effect of combination of CAP and cisplatin-mediated chemotherapy of oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) in vitro. SCC-15 OSCC cells and human gingival fibroblasts (HGF-1) cells were treated with cisplatin, and then, the cells were irradiated with CAP. Following this, viability and apoptosis behavior of the cells were investigated. The viability of SCC-15 cells was inhibited by cisplatin with a dose-dependent manner and CAP treatment time. HGF-1 cells also showed decreased viability by treatment with cisplatin and CAP. Combination of 1 μM cisplatin plus 3 min of CAP treatment or 3 μM cisplatin plus 1 min of CAP treatment showed a synergistic anticancer effect with appropriate cytotoxicity against normal cells. ROS generation and dead cell staining were also increased by the increase in CAP treatment time. Furthermore, tumor-suppressor proteins and apoptosis-related enzymes also increased according to the treatment time of CAP. We showed the synergistic effect of cisplatin and CAP treatment against SCC-15 cells with low cytotoxicity against normal cells.
Highlights
Cold atmospheric plasma (CAP) has been extensively studied in the biomedical field in recent decades due to its biological and physicochemical properties [1,2,3,4]
Since the free radicals induced by non-thermal plasma (NTP) have the danger of the hemolytic activity against red blood cells, the mild condition of reactive oxygen species (ROS)/reactive nitrogen species (RNS) induction by CAP is required for safe treatment on human diseases [16]
We studied the synergistic effect of the CAP/cisplatin combination on ROS generation, apoptosis and anticancer activity using squamous cell carcinoma cells and normal cells
Summary
Cold atmospheric plasma (CAP) has been extensively studied in the biomedical field in recent decades due to its biological and physicochemical properties [1,2,3,4]. CAP has recently been spotlighted in the local treatment of cancer because CAP in the biological system generates reactive oxygen species (ROS) and/or reactive nitrogen species (RNS), i.e., excessive ROS or RNS generation by CAP treatment induces oxidative stress against cancer cells and subsequently results in apoptotic death [5,6,7,8] These unique properties of CAP are regarded as a safe treatment option for cancer patients because it can be applied to the specific body site of action without systemic side-effects against the human body [9,10,11,12]. Cellular mutagenic changes induced by CAP treatment should be considered to find precise conditions for safe treatment modality [17]
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