Novel Design of Protein-functionalized Gold Nanoparticles Loaded with Dichlororuthenium (II) (p-cymene) (1,3,5-triaza-7-phosphaadamantane) (RAPTA-C) to Induce Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS)-mediated Apoptosis in Ovarian Cancer Cells

Abstract

Potentially beneficial novel approaches to cancer treatment, particularly for drug-resistant malignancies, include synergistic therapies that combine chemotherapy with photothermal therapy. In our research described here we developed a unique silk protein-functionalized gold nanoparticles (AuNP) formulation for effective combinatorial photothermal therapy (PTT) and chemotherapy against ovarian cancer cells. The main goal of the present investigation was the fabrication of silk protein-functionalized gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) embedded with Dichlororuthenium (II) (p-cymene) (1,3,5-triaza-7-phosphaadamantane) (RAPTA-C) molecules (RC@Au-SF NPs) to improve apoptosis in ovarian cancer cells. The structural and morphological analyses of the prepared nanoformulations confirmed the successful fabrication and uniform distributions of Au-SF NPs with RAPTA-C. We observed the RC@Au-SF NPs showed enhanced toxicity to ovarian cancer cell lines with near infrared (NIR)-light exposure. The RAPTA-C loaded Au-SF NPs significantly improved the internalization of the nanoparticles inside the cells resulting in intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation, mitochondrial membrane potential (MMP) and cell apoptosis on ovarian cancer (SKOV-3 & A2780) cells. We suggest the outcome of the developed formulation for anti-ovarian cancer action will be highly promising for future cancer control research.

Keywords:

• Ovarian cancer cells
• nano-formulation
• photothermal treatment
• cell apoptosis

Author contributions

Chunbo Pan – Materials preparation and analysis, Formal analysis, data curation and validation; Guanghua Gu – Manuscript draft, Reviewing and supervision. All authors read and approved the final version of manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The datasets used and analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author upon request.