Nanodiamond facilitated drug delivery for drug-resistant MCF-7 breast cancers cells in cellular models

Abstract

Drug resistance reduces the effect of drugs, but the usage of effective vectors to carry drugs to tumor microenvironments helps to overcome this situation. Nanodiamond (ND) has high-biocompatibility and can be easily conjugated with biomolecules would be an ideal vehicle for drug delivery. ND also exhibits a strong fluorescence signal due to its defect centers in the lattice that can be detected in a biological system render ND a suitable tracking agent.
In this study, we address the drug resistance issue for doxorubicin (DOX), a clinical anticancer drug for breast cancers. It is known for the 2D culture of breast cancer cells MCF-7 and MDA-MB-231, the efficacy of DOX for both cells are similar, however for 3D cultures (or for tumors), the MCF-7 exhibits significant drug resistance when administrated with DOX, and therefore DOX is less likely to reach the nucleus as designed. Here we report a possible mechanism utilizing the engulfing nature (endocytosis) of cancer cells, with the aid of a designed ND-drug complex that ferries the drug into the cell cytoplasm and releases it. Fluorescence confocal microscopy is used to track the designed complexes in the MCF-7 and MDA-MB-231. MTT assay allows evaluating the cell survival rate. Results show that ND can be used as a bio tracker and a potentially effective drug delivery agent which can more efficiently deliver the drug to resistant cancer cells.


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Yi-Jhen Su
National Dong Hwa University
Taiwan

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