In recent years, natural and synthetic polymers have attracted much attention due to their great potentials in medical science. In the present study, we have investigated the effect of chitosan-bulk (Ch-bulk), chitosan nanoparticles (ChNP), chitosan nanoparticles conjugated with glutaraldehyde (ChNP-GA) with an average size of 300-400 nm on human colorectal carcinoma cells (HCT-116) to examine their cytotoxic and anti-cancer abilities. We have evaluated the effects of Ch-bulk, ChNP, ChNP-GA on cancer cells by morphometric and 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT) assays respectively. Our results revealed that the Ch-bulk, ChNP, ChNP-GA decreased cell viability, cell proliferation and caused cell death in a concentration-dependent manner. Both morphometric and quantitative analyses confirmed that (Ch-bulk) and Chitosan nanoparticles (ChNP and ChNP-GA) induced concentration-dependent effects on the cancer cells. Among these three, ChNP-GA produced a more profound effect on the survivability with compared to each-bulk and Ch-NP treated groups. A dose of 2 mg/mL did not produced much effect on the cancer cell death, however, a dose of 4 mg/mL-6 mg/mL produced significant morphological changes like nuclear condensation and augmentation. Interestingly, a dose of 8 mg/mL produced significant cell death 48 hours post-treatment. In addition, during our morphometric analysis, we found that (Ch-bulk) and Chitosan nanoparticles (ChNP and ChNP-GA) treated cells underwent nuclear disintegration and fragmentation which lead to programmed cell death. Our studies demonstrate that the Ch-bulk, ChNP and ChNP-GA holds a great potential in the treatment of colon cancer.
Keywords: cell culture; Chitosan nanoparticles; HCT-115 cell line; anticancer; colon cancer.