Potential activity of free and PLGA/PEG nanoencapsulated nasturtium officinale extract in inducing cytotoxicity and apoptosis in human lung carcinoma A549 cells

Abstract

Nasturtium officinale extract (NOE) is an herbal product that attracts great attention in cancer therapy due to considerable potential in attenuating the side effects of chemotherapeutics and improving efficacy. However, the clinical application of NOE as a new anti-cancer medicine drug is limited due to its low bioavailability and very short half-life properties. The present research provides to the development of the effective nano-based drug delivery system to target lung carcinoma A549 cells. For this aim, NOE-loaded poly (ethylene glycol)-b-poly (d,l-lactide-co-glycolide) (PEG-PLGA) nanoparticles (NPs) were fabricated and their antiproliferative and proapoptotic effects were evaluated by MTT and flow cytometry (FCM), respectively. Also, the quantitative PCR assay was performed to evaluate the expression of apoptotic markers including p53, Bax, Bcl‐2, and caspase‐3. The IC50 of NOE-loaded PLGA/PEG NPs was 80, 70, and 40 μg/mL for 24, 48, and 72 h, respectively, which was much lower than that of pure form. Also, the percentage of apoptotic cells in the NOE-NPs treated cells was 63.3% and 72.3% at the concentrations of 40 and 60 μg/mL, respectively. Hence, the percentage of apoptotic cells in the NOE-NPs treated cells was considerably higher than groups treated with free NOE. Real-time PCR results demonstrated that the p53, Bax, and Caspase 3 expression were significantly increased when compared to the pure form, which was 1.3-fold, 1.1-fold, and 1.2-fold than the pure form, respectively. Considerably, the results also showed that the reduction of expression levels of bcl-2 and CyclinD1 in NOE-NPs treated cells were close to 1-fold lower than the free form. Taken together, our results proposed that the NOE-loaded PLGA/PEG NPs might be an effective anticancer approach against lung cancer.