Selectively Ablating Malignant Melanoma Cell with Combined Therapy of Cold Atmospheric Plasma (CAP) and Polymersomes Loaded with Protoporphyrin IX (PPIX)

Objective: Our objective is to selectively kill malignant melanoma cells by using CAP and polymersomes loaded with PpIX while avoiding healthy cell death. Methods: PpIX‐loaded polymersomes were seeded onto 3x10 4 cells/mL of fibroblasts and melanoma (A375) cells. After 1, 3, and 5 days of incubation, cell viability was quantified by an MTT assay. CAP was used to treated melanoma and fibroblast cells with different exposure time and voltage conditions. Design Expert Software was used to model the optimal conditions to kill the melanoma cells while keeping the fibroblasts alive. Then, the optimal conditions for CAP were applied. Results: The cell viability studies revealed that PpIX‐loaded polymersomes possessed little cytotoxicity for fibroblasts where they showed a great potential to selectively kill melanoma cells at high concentrations. After one‐day of the cell culture study, melanoma cell viability decreased to 52% while 77% of fibroblasts were still alive when 3x10 4 cells/mL were exposed to 300 μg/ml of nanoparticles.The modeling of CAP indicated that the optimal condition is around 66 seconds. Further studies need to be performed to better understand the correlation between modelling and experimental results. Conclusions The results indicated that a combined therapy with PpIX‐loaded polymersomes and CAP could be a promising treatment for skin cancer drug delivery. This research was supported via funding from Northeastern, TUBITAK (Turkey Science Council P# 2219). AAA is the sponsor society of this research.