Synthesis and characterization of nanoceria-based composites and in vitro evaluation of their cytotoxicity against colon cancer

Abstract

Cerium oxide nanoparticles (CeO2NPs) exhibit biomedical properties as well as cytotoxic effects on tumor cells. Therefore, recent CeO2NPs have been regarded by numerous researchers as metal-based antitumor agents. Moreover, a new series of CeO2NPs having different structures and morphologies such as nickel (Ni)-doped CeO2, hollow CeO2 (hCeO2), and hollow CeO2/silicon dioxide (SiO2) (hCeO2/SiO2) NPs have been synthesized. All these compounds have been further characterized by fourier transform infrared (FT-IR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), energy dispersive X-ray (EDX), high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM), and Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) analyses. Similarly, HRTEM analyses showed that hCeO2/SiO2 nanostructures were composed of CeO2 as core and SiO2 as shell. To this end, cytotoxic activity of synthesized NPs was investigated on HT-29, as a human colorectal cancer cell line and human foreskin fibroblast cell line (HFFF2). The hollow core/shell nanostructures indicated more cytotoxicity compared with other synthesized compounds on HT-29 cell line. The results also revealed that hCeO2/SiO2NPs had less half maximal inhibitory concentration (IC50) (18.625 µg/ml) than other synthesized compounds. All four compounds showed significantly less cytotoxicity effect in non-cancerous cells (HFFF2) compared to tumoral cells (HT-29).