Background: Radiotherapy is the most widely used treatment method for treating cancer with or without surgery and chemotherapy. In lung cancer, it is one of the important treatment steps in excising the tumor from the lung tissue; unfortunately, radiation can induce epithelial- mesenchymal transition (EMT), a typical physiological process in which cuboidal shaped epithelial cell loses its phenotype and acquires mesenchymal-like phenotype thus, increases the metastasis progression in the body. To prevent EMT mediated metastasis, we aimed to 1) synthesize silver nanoparticles by using Gallic acid, a potential antioxidant which acts as stabilizing and reducing agent in the form of silver nanoparticle (GA-AgNPs) 2) to analyze its effect on EMT markers during radiation-induced EMT in A549 cells.
Methods: A549 cells were irradiated with 8Gy (X-ray) and treated with GA-AgNPs at a fixed concentration under in vitro condition. GA-AgNPs were prepared and characterized for absorption, potential stability, size and morphology by UV-Visible spectrophotometer, Zeta potential and Transmission electron microscopy respectively. After irradiation, the morphology changes were observed using an inverted microscope, the gene and protein expression of EMT markers were analyzed by RT-PCR and western blotting.
Results/conclusion: GA-AgNPs are in nano size with fair stability. The synthesized nanoparticles suppressed the EMT markers including Vimentin, N-cadherin, Snail-1 and increased E-cadherin expression which might inhibit cancer cells to acquire radio resistant metastasis potential.
Keywords: Gallic acid; Metastasis; Radiation; Silver nanoparticle.
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