Letchumanan Devanthiran, Ibrahim Suriani, Nagoor Noor Hasima, Mohd Arshad Norhafiza
Centre for Research in Biotechnology for Agriculture, Universiti Malaya, Kuala Lumpur 50603, Malaysia.
Department of Primary Care Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Universiti Malaya, Kuala Lumpur 50603, Malaysia.
Int J Mol Sci. 2025 Jul 27;26(15):7267. doi: 10.3390/ijms26157267.
The increasing prevalence of cancer necessitates the development of novel and effective therapeutic agents. This study evaluates the anticancer potential of biosynthesized copper oxide nanoparticles (CuO NPs) using extract against human colon and breast cancer cells. The CuO NPs were characterized using various techniques to confirm their structure, size, morphology, and functional groups. The average size of CuO NPs synthesized was 20-60 nm, with spherical shape. The cytotoxic effects of these CuO NPs reveal a dose-dependent reduction in cell viability with 50% inhibitory concentration (IC) at 58.53 ± 0.13 and 53.95 ± 1.1 μg/mL, respectively. Further investigation into the mechanism of action was conducted using flow cytometry and apoptosis assays, which indicated that CuO NPs induced cell cycle arrest and apoptosis in cancer cells. Reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation, caspase activity assay, and comet assay were also performed to elucidate the underlying pathways, suggesting that oxidative stress and DNA damage play pivotal roles in the cytotoxicity observed. Overall, our findings demonstrate that biosynthesized CuO NPs exhibit notable anticancer activity against colon and breast cancer cells, with moderate selectivity over normal cells, highlighting their potential as a therapeutic agent due to their biocompatibility. However, further studies are required to validate their selectivity and safety profile.
癌症患病率的不断上升使得开发新型有效治疗药物成为必要。本研究评估了利用提取物生物合成的氧化铜纳米颗粒（CuO NPs）对人结肠癌细胞和乳腺癌细胞的抗癌潜力。使用各种技术对CuO NPs进行表征，以确认其结构、大小、形态和官能团。合成的CuO NPs平均大小为20 - 60纳米，呈球形。这些CuO NPs的细胞毒性作用显示细胞活力呈剂量依赖性降低，其50%抑制浓度（IC）分别为58.53±0.13和53.95±1.1微克/毫升。使用流式细胞术和凋亡检测对作用机制进行了进一步研究，结果表明CuO NPs诱导癌细胞的细胞周期停滞和凋亡。还进行了活性氧（ROS）生成、半胱天冬酶活性检测和彗星试验以阐明潜在途径，表明氧化应激和DNA损伤在观察到的细胞毒性中起关键作用。总体而言，我们的研究结果表明，生物合成的CuO NPs对结肠癌细胞和乳腺癌细胞具有显著的抗癌活性，对正常细胞具有适度的选择性，因其生物相容性突出了它们作为治疗药物的潜力。然而，需要进一步研究来验证其选择性和安全性。
