Anticancer effect of zinc oxide nanoparticles prepared by varying entry time of ion carriers against A431 skin cancer cells in vitro

Albandri Yousef Aljohar; Ghazala Muteeb; Qamar Zia; Sahabjada Siddiqui; Mohammad Aatif; Mohd Farhan; Mohd Farhan Khan; Abdulrahman Alsultan; Azfar Jamal; Adil Alshoaibi; Ejaz Ahmad; Mir Waqas Alam; Md Arshad; Mohd Imran Ahamed

doi:10.3389/fchem.2022.1069450

Anticancer effect of zinc oxide nanoparticles prepared by varying entry time of ion carriers against A431 skin cancer cells in vitro

Front Chem. 2022 Dec 1:10:1069450. doi: 10.3389/fchem.2022.1069450. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Albandri Yousef Aljohar¹, Ghazala Muteeb², Qamar Zia^{3

4}, Sahabjada Siddiqui⁵, Mohammad Aatif⁶, Mohd Farhan⁷, Mohd Farhan Khan⁸, Abdulrahman Alsultan⁹, Azfar Jamal^{3

10}, Adil Alshoaibi¹¹, Ejaz Ahmad¹², Mir Waqas Alam¹¹, Md Arshad^{13

14}, Mohd Imran Ahamed¹⁵

Affiliations

¹ Department of Clinical Nutrition, College of Applied Medical Science, King Faisal University, Al Ahsa, Saudi Arabia.
² Department of Nursing, College of Applied Medical Science, King Faisal University, Al Ahsa, Saudi Arabia.
³ Department of Medical Laboratory Sciences, College of Applied Medical Sciences, Majmaah University, Al Majma'ah, Saudi Arabia.
⁴ Health and Basic Sciences Research Center, Majmaah University, Al Majma'ah, Saudi Arabia.
⁵ Department of Biotechnology, Era's Lucknow Medical College & Hospital, Era University, Lucknow, India.
⁶ Department of Public Health, College of Applied Medical Science, King Faisal University, Al Ahsa, Saudi Arabia.
⁷ Department of Basic Sciences, King Faisal University, Al Ahsa, Saudi Arabia.
⁸ Faculty of Science, Gagan College of Management & Technology, Aligarh, India.
⁹ Department of Biomedical Sciences, College of Medicine, King Faisal University, Al Ahsa, Saudi Arabia.
¹⁰ Department of Biology, College of Science, Majmaah University, Al Majma'ah, Saudi Arabia.
¹¹ Department of Physics, College of Science, King Faisal University, Al Ahsa, Saudi Arabia.
¹² Interdisciplinary Biotechnology Unit, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, India.
¹³ Molecular Endocrinology Laboratory, Zoology Department, Lucknow University, Lucknow, India.
¹⁴ Department of Zoology, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, India.
¹⁵ Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, India.

Abstract

Although, zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZRTs) as an anti-cancer agent have been the subject of numerous studies, none of the reports has investigated the impact of the reaction entry time of ion-carriers on the preparation of ZRTs. Therefore, we synthesized variants of ZRTs by extending the entry time of NaOH (that acts as a carrier of hydroxyl ions) in the reaction mixture. The anti-proliferative action, morphological changes, reactive oxygen species (ROS) production, and nuclear apoptosis of ZRTs on human A431 skin carcinoma cells were observed. The samples revealed crystallinity and purity by X-ray diffraction (XRD). Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images of ZRT-1 (5 min ion carrier entry) and ZRT-2 (10 min ion carrier entry) revealed microtubule like morphology. On prolonging the entry time for ion carrier (NaOH) introduction in the reaction mixture, a relative ascent in the aspect ratio was seen. The typical ZnO band with a slight shift in the absorption maxima was evident with UV-visible spectroscopy. Both ZRT-1 and ZRT-2 exhibited non-toxic behavior as evident by RBC lysis assay. Additionally, ZRT-2 showed better anti-cancer potential against A431 cells as seen by MTT assay, ROS generation and chromatin condensation analyses. At 25 μM of ZRT-2, 5.56% cells were viable in MTT test, ROS production was enhanced to 166.71%, while 33.0% of apoptotic cells were observed. The IC₅₀ for ZRT-2 was slightly lower (6 μM) than that for ZRT-1 (8 μM) against A431 cells. In conclusion, this paper presents a modest, economical procedure to generate ZRT nano-structures exhibiting strong cytotoxicity against the A431 cell line, indicating that ZRTs may have application in combating cancer.

Keywords: MTT assay; malignant cell lines; reactive oxygen species; sol-gel synthesis; zinc oxide nanoparticles.