Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM), Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.
Department of Physiology and Biophysics, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL, USA.
Sci Rep. 2021 Feb 2;11(1):2737. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-82441-8.
The incidence of malignant melanoma has rapidly increased in the last two decades. There are many challenges associated with the current conventional therapies, including tumour size and location, the specificity of treatments, tumour resistance, non-mutually exclusive mutations, drug resistance, and many adverse side effects. Due to conventional therapies having several limitations, we have explored an alternative therapy such as nano-clays; nano-sized natural materials originating from clay fraction of the soil. Recently, clay nanoparticles have increasingly been used as a drug carrier for cancer treatment due to their high absorption, ability to engulf microbes, and low toxicity. In this study, we evaluated the effects of a nano-clays mix on melanoma cell proliferation and cell viability in vitro and melanoma growth in vivo xenograft animal model. The in vitro study revealed that nano-clay treatments significantly reduced melanoma cell proliferation and cell viability in a dosage-dependent manner. The in vivo tumour xenograft model demonstrated that nano-clay mix treatment led to significantly reduced tumour size and weight, decreased tumour cell mitosis, and induced tumour necrosis. These processes owe to the most probable changes in the membrane potential of the cancer cells once nano-clays bind with the former through the high non-specific adhesion characteristic of the cancer cells. As the data suggest an important role of nano-clays as an inhibitor of melanoma cell proliferation and survival, these prove to be a natural and effective medicine for the treatment of melanoma. The proven compatibility of nano-clays with the human cells with little side-effects makes them a highly preferred choice for the treatment of melanoma and probably other types of cancers.
在过去的二十年中，恶性黑色素瘤的发病率迅速增加。目前的常规疗法存在许多挑战，包括肿瘤大小和位置、治疗的特异性、肿瘤耐药性、非互斥突变、耐药性和许多不良反应。由于常规疗法存在许多局限性，我们探索了一种替代疗法，如纳米粘土；纳米级天然材料来源于土壤的粘土部分。由于粘土纳米颗粒具有高吸收率、吞噬微生物的能力和低毒性，最近它们越来越多地被用作癌症治疗的药物载体。在这项研究中，我们评估了纳米粘土混合物对体外黑色素瘤细胞增殖和细胞活力以及体内异种移植动物模型中黑色素瘤生长的影响。体外研究表明，纳米粘土处理以剂量依赖的方式显著降低黑色素瘤细胞的增殖和活力。体内肿瘤异种移植模型表明，纳米粘土混合物治疗导致肿瘤体积和重量明显减小，肿瘤细胞有丝分裂减少，并诱导肿瘤坏死。这些过程归因于一旦纳米粘土通过癌细胞的高非特异性粘附特性与前者结合，癌细胞的膜电位发生最可能的变化。由于数据表明纳米粘土作为黑色素瘤细胞增殖和存活抑制剂的重要作用，它们被证明是治疗黑色素瘤的天然有效药物。纳米粘土与人类细胞的相容性证明，其副作用很小，使它们成为治疗黑色素瘤甚至其他类型癌症的首选。
