a Department of Public Health School , Guangxi Medical University , Nanning , China.
b Department of Physics and the SAVANT Center , The University of Texas at Arlington , Arlington , TX , USA.
Cancer Biol Ther. 2019;20(6):812-825. doi: 10.1080/15384047.2018.1564568. Epub 2019 Feb 6.
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a primary malignancy of the liver and occurs predominantly in patients with underlying chronic liver disease and cirrhosis. HCC is now the third leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide, with over 500,000 people affected. However, there is no complete effective (ideal) treatment for liver cancer yet, and the new methods are expected to be discovered. Herein, for the first time, we report the anti-HCC effects of copper-cysteamine nanoparticles (Cu-Cy NPs), a new type of photosensitizers. An in vitro 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol- 2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT) assay shows that Cu-Cy NPs could significantly reduce the activity of HepG2 cells at a very low dose after a short time of ultraviolet radiation. In addition, we found that cell death was induced by Cu-Cy NPs, which is associated with cellular apoptosis. This implied that apoptosis might be the main mechanism of the Cu-Cy's anti-HCC activity. Furthermore, we found that Cu-Cy NPs obviously inhibited the tumor growth in vivo. More interestingly, we found that the soluble Cu-Cy NPs were able to enter exosomes which were secreted by tumor cells, and exosomes could be used to deliver Cu-Cy NPs to target tumor cells. All these observations suggest that Cu-Cy NPs have a good potential for cancer treatment.
肝细胞癌（HCC）是肝脏的原发性恶性肿瘤，主要发生在患有潜在慢性肝病和肝硬化的患者中。HCC 现已成为全球癌症死亡的第三大主要原因，全球受影响人数超过 50 万。然而，目前还没有针对肝癌的完全有效（理想）治疗方法，预计将发现新的方法。在此，我们首次报道了一种新型光敏剂——铜半胱氨酸纳米颗粒（Cu-Cy NPs）对 HCC 的抑制作用。体外 3-（4,5-二甲基噻唑-2-基）-2,5-二苯基四氮唑溴盐（MTT）检测结果显示，Cu-Cy NPs 在短时间紫外线照射后，即使在非常低的剂量下也能显著降低 HepG2 细胞的活性。此外，我们发现细胞死亡是由 Cu-Cy NPs 诱导的，这与细胞凋亡有关。这表明细胞凋亡可能是 Cu-Cy 抗 HCC 活性的主要机制。此外，我们发现 Cu-Cy NPs 能明显抑制体内肿瘤生长。更有趣的是，我们发现可溶性的 Cu-Cy NPs 能够进入肿瘤细胞分泌的外体中，并且外体可以将 Cu-Cy NPs 递送至靶肿瘤细胞。所有这些观察结果表明，Cu-Cy NPs 具有很好的癌症治疗潜力。
