Gold Nanoparticles sensitize pancreatic cancer cells to gemcitabine

Huai, Yanyan; Zhang, Yushan; Xiong, Xunhao; Das, Shamik; Bhattacharya, Resham; Mukherjee, Priyabrata

Gold Nanoparticles sensitize pancreatic cancer cells to gemcitabine

Authors:

Yanyan Huai¹, Yushan Zhang¹, Xunhao Xiong¹, Shamik Das², Resham Bhattacharya² and Priyabrata Mukherjee^1,2

Affiliations:

¹ Department of Pathology, the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA.

² Peggy and Charles Stephenson Cancer Center, the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA.

Keywords:

gold nanoparticle, gemcitabine, drug resistance, cancer stem cell, EMT.

Abbreviations:

AuNP – gold nanoparticle,

CAF – cancer-associated fibroblast,

CSC – cancer stem cell,

DLS - dynamic light scattering,

EMT – epithelial to mesenchymal transition,

GF – growth factor,

NT – not treated,

PDAC – pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma,

TEM – transmission electron microscopy.

Corresponding Author(s):

Priyabrata Mukherjee, Suite BRC 1409, Biomedical Research Center, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center (OUHSC), 975 NE 10th Street, Oklahoma City, OK-73104; Priyabrata-Mukherjee@ouhsc.edu

Conflict of interest statement:

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Please cite this article as:

Yanyan Huai, Yushan Zhang, Xunhao Xiong, Shamik Das, Resham Bhattacharya and Priyabrata Mukherjee (2019). Gold Nanoparticles sensitize pancreatic cancer cells to gemcitabine. Cell Stress 3(8): 267-279. doi: 10.15698/cst2019.08.195

© 2019 Huai et al. This is an open-access article released under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which allows the unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduc-tion in any medium, provided the original author and source are acknowledged.

Abstract:

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is one of the deadliest solid cancers with dismal prognosis. Several mechanisms that are mainly responsible for aggressiveness and therapy resistance of PDAC cells include epithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT), stemness and Mitogen Activated Protein Kinase (MAPK) signaling. Strategies that inhibit these mechanisms are critically important to improve therapeutic outcome in PDAC. In the current study, we wanted to investigate whether gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) could sensitize pancreatic cancer cells to the chemotherapeutic agent gemcitabine. We demonstrated that treatment with AuNPs of 20 nm diameter inhibited migration and colony forming ability of pancreatic cancer cells. Pre-treatment with AuNPs sensitized pancreatic cancer cells to gemcitabine in both viability and colony forming assays. Mechanistically, pre-treatment of pancreatic cancer cells with AuNPs decreased gemcitabine induced EMT, stemness and MAPK activation. Taken together, these findings suggest that AuNPs could be considered as a potential agent to sensitize pancreatic cancer cells to gemcitabine.