Anticancer drug transport to breast cancer cells using mineral nanoparticles — ASN Events
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  3. Anticancer drug transport to breast cancer cells using mineral nanoparticles

Anticancer drug transport to breast cancer cells using mineral nanoparticles (#212)

Chia Yuen Chong 1 , Iekhsan Othman 1 , Ezharul Hoque Chowdhury 1
  1. Jefferey Cheah School of Medicine and Health Sciences, Monash University, Sunway, Malaysia

Background: The current conventional way of chemotherapy using anti-cancer drugs has caused many side effects to patients. There are a high number of patients reporting intolerable symptoms, including nausea and vomiting, tiredness, depression, and more that results in poor quality of life. This is mainly due to non-selective cytotoxic effect of anticancer drugs that not only kill the cancer cells, but also affect the normal healthy cells. Eventually, these unbearable adverse effects increase the number of patients abandoning treatment, and in some others delaying their treatment progress. The pH sensitive carbonate apatite (CA), a major component of hard tissues in the body, has evolved as an efficient non-viral inorganic DNA nanocarrier. Due to heterogenous charge distribution and being armed with ability to prevent crystal growth for generation of nanoscale particles, CA nanoparticles offer an ideal way to deliver anticancer drugs to targeted cancer cells via endocytosis.

Aim: The objective of this research project is to deliver anti-cancer drugs, in particular Exemestane, Letrozole and Tamoxifen specifically to breast cancer cells by using bio-responsitve salt nano-crystals.

Methods: Bio-functionalized nanoparticles with loaded drugs were fabricated and characterized by measurement of particle size, zeta potential and drug binding affinity. Breast cancer cell lines, MCF-7 and 4T1 were cultured, maintained and seeded in a 24-well plate. Drug-loaded CA particles were incubated with the seeded cells for 48 hours before analysis of cell viability by MTT assay.

Results: We found that cell treatment with drug-loaded CA particles have lower cell viability in comparison to cell treatment with only free drugs. And this result is consistent in all different drug concentrations being tested.

Conclusions: It is likely that the CA has a promising future for clinical cancer treatment in increasing the effectiveness of chemotherapy and concurrently reducing its side effect.

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