Anti-Cancer Activity of the Combinational Treatment of Noozone Cold Plasma with p-FAK Antibody-Conjugated Gold Nanoparticles in OSCC Xenograft Mice

Abstract

Oral squamous cell cancer (OSCC) is the most common type of oral cancer (about 80–90% of cases) and various research is being done to cure the disease. This paper aims to verify whether treatment with no-ozone cold plasma (NCP), which is designed for safe usage of the plasma on oral cavities, in combination with gold nanoparticles conjugated with p-FAK antibody (p-FAK/GNP) can trigger the selective and instant killing of SCC-25 cells both in vitro and in vivo. When SCC25 and HaCaT cells are exposed to p-FAK/GNP+NCP, the instant cell death was observed only in SCC25 cells. Such p-FAK/GNP+NCP-mediated cell death was observed only when NCP was directly treated on SCC25 harboring p-FAK/GNP. During NCP treatment, the removal of charged particles from NCP using grounded electric mesh radically decreased the p-FAK/GNP+NCP-mediated cell death. This p-FAK/GNP+NCP-mediated selective cell death of OSCC was also observed in mice xenograft models using SCC25 cells. The mere treatment of p-FAK/GNP and NCP on the xenograft tumor slowly decreased the size of the tumor, and only about 50% of the tumor remained at the end of the experiment. On the other hand, 1 week of p-FAK/GNP+NCP treatment was enough to reduce half of the tumor size, and most of tumor tissue had vanished at the end. An analysis of isolated tissues showed that in the case of individual treatment with p-FAK/GNP or NCP, the cancer cell population was reduced due to apoptotic cell death. However, in the case of p-FAK/GNP+NCP, apoptotic cell death was unobserved, and most tissues were composed of collagen. Thus, this paper suggests the possibility of p-FAK/GNP+NCP as a new method for treating OSCC.

Business Risk Mitigation in the Development Process of New Monoclonal Antibody Drug Conjugates for Cancer Treatment

“…Other polymeric nanoparticles based on natural or synthetic biopolymers are conjugated with mAb and are carriers of anticancer drugs, such as as doxorubicin (DOX), paclitaxel (PTX), epirubicine, and cisplatin [ 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 ]. Many other nanocarriers have been conjugated with mAb, e.g., dendrimers [ 22 ], gold nanoparticles [ 23 ], and magnetic nanoparticles [ 24 ].…”

Editorials for ‘Advances in Cold Plasma in Biomedicines’

“…Although this study was conducted in an in vitro system only, the results suggested that CAP could have considerable treatment benefits, considering that surgery is the only treatment option for chondrosarcoma. The research article by Choi et al suggested novel approaches for using CAP in combination with gold nanoparticles to treat oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) [ 4 ]. According to the research therein, they applied a no-ozone cold plasm to SCC25 and HaCaT cell lines in combination with gold nanoparticles conjugated with the antibody-targeting p-FAK protein (p-FAK/GNP); this combinational treatment successfully triggered OSCC-specific immediate cell death.…”