Killing cancer cells with nanotechnology: the effect of CaS nanostructures on the cell replication rate and survival of human mammary adenocarcinoma cell lines (780.9)

Calcium sulfide (CaS) nanostructures have the potential to play an important role as cadmium‐free nanoscaled semiconductors with applications in bioimaging, in vivo labeling, and sensing, and for drug delivery systems. The objective of this work is to establish the effect of CaS nanostructures on cell replication rate and survival of human mammary adenocarcinoma cell lines. Human adenocarcinoma cell lines are grown in eagle’s minimum essential medium (EMEM). Single doses of dispersions containing traces of CaS nanostructures were added to human mammary adenocarcinoma cell lines with a 70 % confluence. After a 24 hour period, 200,000 cancer cells were subculture in T‐75 treated flasks. The number of dead cells in the cell culture media supernatant was determined in intervals of 24 hours using a Biorad T10 cell counter. The number of dead cells in the supernatant is found to increase from 2,000 in control cell cultures to over 70,000 in cancer cell cultures exposed to a single dose of the CaS dispersion in the first 24 hours: this represents 35 % of the initial cell seeding. The number of dead cells remains in the range of 60,000 to 30,000 in measurements performed between 48 and 72 hours following the single dose of the dispersion containing the CaS nanostructures. The number of replicating cells is found to decrease in the first 72 hours and to increase thereafter. We conclude that the CaS nanostructures affect the replication rate and survival of human adenocarcinoma cells and demonstrate the role CaS nanostructures may play to treat localized cancers. Grant Funding Source : NIH NIGMS‐R25GM088023 and NIGMS‐R25GM096955