Combination therapy by using nanoparticles in breast cancer

Breast cancer (BC) is one of the most common lethal cancer in women. The treatment of BC is very difficult due to the heterogeneity of the tumor. In current cancer treatments such as chemotherapy, potantial side effects are observed in patients due to the delivery problems and effect of these drugs on both tumor and healthy cells. Nanoparticles developed together with the nanotechnology and biomedicine have great promises in the oncology field due to the specific distribution and controlled release of the drug. In this study, biocompatible superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPION) loaded with trastuzumab and cetuximab monoclonal antibodies were used to target multiple receptors at the same time and was performed on SKBR3 BC cell lines and dH1f fibroblasts as a control cells. The toxic dose, effect of single and combinational therapy was assessed by MTT cell viability test on the second day. Specific cell death related factors in cancer signaling pathways was determined by using qRT-PCR. As a result, compared with control cells, beyond high mortality in cancer cell lines, increased expression of apoptosis-related genes was observed in combined treatment. These results show that the combined drugs which designed is very promising, especially in terms of BC treatment.