Long Term Effect of Passive Tumor Targeted Inorganic Drug Nanocarriers on Lung Healthy and Cancer Cells

Abstract

Drug nanocarriers have shown great potential in cancer therapy, as they provide controlled- and sustained-release properties. Nanocarriers can deliver drugs with passive or active targeting, but tumor accumulation of passively targeted nanocarriers is generally more slowly and lower compared to their active counterparts. Thus in addition to cancer cells, healthy cells are also exposed to these nanocarriers at the same time. In the light of this issue, this study examined long time exposure effect of passively targeted drug nanocarriers on human lung epithelial BEAS-2B cells and human lung cancer A549 cells. For this reason, Fe3O4@SiO2(FITC)-DOX formulated drug nanocarriers combining imaging and therapy were used and its cellular uptake, cytotoxicity and apoptotic effects were investigated. Cellular uptake and cytotoxicity experiments demonstrated that passively targeted nanocarriers showed efficient reduction of cancer cell viability. This did not affect internalization and viability of healthy cells in 24 h. But after 96 h prolonged incubation time, non-tumoral BEAS-2B cells showed moderate level cellular uptake of nanocarriers and exhibited lower level drug-mediated cytotoxicity as compared to A549 cancer cells. Moreover, it was found that the nanocarriers considerable increased the percent of apoptotic cells in A549 cells, whereas showed no apoptotic effect in BEAS-2B cells in 96 h. These results show that passively targeted inorganic drug nanocarriers could be promising for enhancing the chemotherapeutic effects of anticancer drugs, while producing negligible effects on healthy cells.