Gold nanoparticle mediated radiation response among key cell components of the tumour microenvironment for the advancement of cancer nanotechnology

Sci Rep. 2020 Jul 21;10(1):12096. doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-68994-0.

Abstract

One of the major issues in cancer radiotherapy (RT) is normal tissue toxicity. Introduction of radiosensitizers like gold nanoparticles (GNPs) into cancer cells to enhance the local RT dose has been tested successfully. However, it is not known how GNPs interact with other stromal cells such as normal fibroblasts (FBs) and cancer associated fibroblasts (CAFs) within the tumour microenvironment. It is known that FBs turn into CAFs to promote tumour growth. Hence, we used FBs and CAFs along with HeLa (our cancer cell line) to evaluate the differences in GNP uptake and resulting radiation induced damage to elucidate the GNP-mediated therapeutic effect in RT. The CAFs had the largest uptake of the GNPs per cell, with on average 265% relative to HeLa while FBs had only 7.55% the uptake of HeLa and 2.87% the uptake of CAFs. This translated to increases in 53BP1-related DNA damage foci in CAFs (13.5%) and HeLa (9.8%) compared to FBs (8.8%) with RT treatment. This difference in DNA damage due to selective targeting of cancer associated cells over normal cells may allow GNPs to be an effective tool in future cancer RT to battle normal tissue toxicity while improving local RT dose to the tumour.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Cancer-Associated Fibroblasts / drug effects
  • Cancer-Associated Fibroblasts / radiation effects
  • Cell Proliferation / drug effects
  • Cell Proliferation / radiation effects
  • Cell Survival / drug effects
  • Cell Survival / radiation effects
  • DNA Damage
  • Gene Expression Regulation, Neoplastic / drug effects
  • Gene Expression Regulation, Neoplastic / radiation effects
  • Gold / chemistry
  • Gold / pharmacology*
  • HeLa Cells
  • Humans
  • Metal Nanoparticles
  • Neoplasms / metabolism*
  • Neoplasms / therapy
  • Radiation-Sensitizing Agents / chemistry
  • Radiation-Sensitizing Agents / pharmacology*
  • Tumor Microenvironment / drug effects
  • Tumor Microenvironment / radiation effects
  • Tumor Suppressor p53-Binding Protein 1 / metabolism*

Substances

  • Radiation-Sensitizing Agents
  • TP53BP1 protein, human
  • Tumor Suppressor p53-Binding Protein 1
  • Gold