Discipline: Biological Sciences
Subcategory: Cancer Research
Ranisha Logan - Jarvis Christian College
Co-Author(s): Glendora Carter, Ph.D.; Shakhawat Bhuiyan, Ph. D
Breast cancer is the second leading cause of death in women across the world and is highly invasive in African American females. Due to the evolution of breast cancer, the exact cause and treatment for this prominent disease is still unknown. Nano-particles, however, have become an intense area of scientific research, due to a variety of potential applications in bio-medicine, optical studies, engineering, and may hold promising results for cancer chemotherapy. Nano-particles are used to obtain information or serve as a drug delivery system to the affected site. Furthermore, Silver is known as a common antiseptic, antibiotic material and is used as means of purifying water in many third world countries; also it has been used as an ancient form of cancer treatment. In this study, we hypothesized whether silver nano-particles had cytotoxic effects on MCF-7 Human Adenocarcinoma cells (American Type Culture Collection). The MCF-7 cell lines are 3-dimensional (3D) scaffolded, extracellular matrix-based models which are scaffold-free and is great for the testing of toxicity, proliferation and apoptosis rate and have been used in many tumorgenicity and virus studies. The treatment effect was made possible due to Enhanced Permeability and Retention (EPR) effect. An aqueous solution containing Silver nano-particles which were synthesized from the compounds silver nitrate (AgNO3) and sodium citrate with a size distribution of 40 nm and absorbance of 0.02 ng/ml was purchased from the Sigma Aldrich. Different concentrations of the silver-nano-particles (12.5ng/ml, 25ng/ml, 50ng/ml, 100ng/ml and 200ng/ml) were used in a dose and time-dependent manner to treat the MCF-7 cells. An MTS method and a standard hemocytometer count was done every 24 hours. Results showed the IC-50 of cells inhibition rate of silver nano-particles at 25ng/ml with a 48% inhibition rate and at 50ng/ml there was a 73% inhibition rate and at 100ng/ml there was a 99% inhibition. An RT-PCR analysis will be done to characterize the gene expression of the protein retrieved from the treated cells. Additionally, the protein extraction and an apoptosis assay using Caspase 3 & 8 will be done to assess the toxicity rate.
Abstract-ERN-Ranisha.docxFunder Acknowledgement(s): This research was funded by a NSF/HBCU-UP grant awarded to Dr. Shakhawat Bhuiyan PhD, Professor of Biology, Jarvis Christian College, Hawkins, Texas.
Faculty Advisor: Shakhawat Bhuiyan, Sbhuiyan@jarvis.edu
Role: This research was done by the primary author Ranisha Logan and supervised by S. Bhuiyan Ph.D.