Silver Nanoparticles Enhanced Doxorubicin treatment for Improving their Efficacy against Esophageal Cancer Cells

Moawad, Mahmoud; Youssef, Ahmed M.; Elsherbeni, Sayed Abd Elmajied; Fahmy, Ahmed M.; El-Ghannam, Gamal

doi:10.21608/ejchem.2023.210101.7955

Silver Nanoparticles Enhanced Doxorubicin treatment for Improving their Efficacy against Esophageal Cancer Cells

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

¹ Pathology Dept., National Cancer Institute, Cairo Univ. Egypt,

² Packaging Materials Department, National Research Centre, 33 El Bohouth St. (former El Tahrir St.), Dokki, Giza, P.O. 12622, Egypt.

³ National Institute of Laser Enhanced Science (NILES), Cairo University, Giza, Egypt.

10.21608/ejchem.2023.210101.7955

Abstract

Silver nanoparticles (SNPs) have shown potential in various biomedical applications, including biological imaging, antimicrobial and anticancer therapy, and promotion of wound repair and bone healing. In this study, we demonstrate the feasible biomedical application of SNPs coated with the FDA-approved anti-cancer drug doxorubicin (DOX) for dual-chemotherapy and photo thermal treatment (PTT) on esophagus tumors in vitro. The synthesized doxorubicin/ silver nanoparticles (DOX-SNPs) exhibited high cytotoxicity against the tumor cells and strong light harvesting for temperature increase in vitro. PTT-assisted DOX-SNPs entailed a highly cytotoxic effect on the esophagus cell line for 15 min after laser treatment, indicating the potential of DOX-SNPs as a nano-theranostic material for treating esophagus tumors. Furthermore, the study investigated gene expression levels in the esophagus cell line after laser exposure and found that the Bax gene was overexpressed, while the BCL-2 gene was down-regulated post-laser irradiation compared to the control group, as determined by RT-PCR analysis. According to the findings of this thesis, the mRNA expression level of pro-apoptotic genes became unregulated, while the expression of anti-apoptotic genes was found to be down regulated, while a higher level of caspase-3 mRNA was observed in SNPs/DOX nanocomposites treated OE33 cells with laser compared to control cells.

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