International Congress on Biological and Health Sciences, Afyonkarahisar, Türkiye, 26 - 28 Şubat 2021, ss.169
Abstract:
Cisplatin resistance is an important problem in ovarian cancer. Drug resistance develops in
different ways such as efflux, influx, drug detoxification, DNA repair, and apoptosis failure.
The existence of different resistance-building mechanisms indicates that a strategy targeting a
particular pathway may not produce an efficient sensitization to the drug. Therefore, more
effective treatments are needed in cancer cells that have acquired drug resistance. Ultrasound
has a wide range of applications in medicine and is widely used in both diagnosis and
treatment. Exposing biological systems to low-intensity ultrasonic waves causes mechanical
and thermal effects known as biological effects. Ultrasound waves cause thermal/mechanic
effects leading to increases cell membrane permeability. The combined effect of low-intensity
ultrasound and chemotherapy is a promising method in anti-cancer therapy. With the
increased membrane porosity in the presence of ultrasound energy, more chemotherapy
agents are allowed to enter the cells. Solid cavitation agents can be used to increase the
effectiveness of ultrasound therapy because they do not deform quickly in the presence of
acoustic energy. Among these agents, gold nanocones (AuNCs) synthesized by the oil-inwater emulsion method attract attention with their large, rough surface areas and
biocompatibility. In this study, we developed ultrasound active AuNCs and treated the
cisplatin sensitive ovarian cancer cells (A2780) and cisplatin resistance ovarian cancer cells
(A2780cis) with therapeutic ultrasound (TUS)+AuNCs+cisplatin to overcome drug resistance.
When both cell lines were treated with the calculated IC50 values of cisplatin, AuNCs, and
TUS, less than 20% cell viability was obtained. Our proposed treatment strategy was
statistically significant and effective compared to the other treatment groups. The results show
promise in the development of effective therapy against cisplatin-resistant cells.
Keywords: therapeutic ultrasound, gold nanocone, cisplatin resistance, ovarian cancer
This work has been supported by Erciyes University Scientific Research Projects
Coordination Unit under grant number 10657.