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Evaluation of Induced Apoptosis by Biosynthesized Zinc Oxide Nanoparticles in MCF-7 Breast Cancer Cells Using Bak1 and Bclx Expression

  • BIOCHEMISTRY, BIOPHYSICS, AND MOLECULAR BIOLOGY
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Abstract

Zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZnO NPs) have peaked interests in many researches in these recent years due to their advantageous application in modern health care applications. Therefore, we successfully synthesized ZnO NPs by Acacia luciana flower extract as stabilizing, reducing and capping agent, to investigate the antiproliferative potential and apoptosis induction in breast cancer cell lines. The involvements of Acacia luciana bioactive compounds in the stabilization of the ZnO NPs were confirmed by FTIR analysis. FESEM and EDS instruments confirmed that biosynthesized nanoparticles have an irregular morphology and mostly composed of Zn, C, and O respectively. The TEM and zeta potential instruments confirmed that biosynthesized nanoparticles have slight negative charges with particle size of 40 nm. The survivorship of MCF-7 cells were examined by MTT assay and revealed that ZnO NPs inhibited cell viability in a dose- and time-dependent effect with IC50 value of 3.1 µg/mL after 72 h exposure. Also, as a novel work onto ZnO NPs obtained by Acacia extracts, the Bak1/Bclx expression ratio was elucidated utilizing RT-PCR technique. The results demonstrated that ZnO NPs could enhance the expression ratio; therefore they have the potential to induce apoptosis in breast cancer cells via mitochondria-mediated apoptotic pathway.

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Notes

  1. Abbreviations: FESEM, field emission scanning electron microscopy; EDS, energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy; TEM, transmission electron microscopy; PCR, polymerase chain reaction; ZnO NPs, zinc oxide nanoparticles.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors thank the Deputy of Research and Technology of Zabol University of Medical Sciences for all support provided.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Hepatobiliary, Xi’an no. 3 Hospital, the Affiliated Hospital of Northwest University, 710018, Xi’an, Shaanxi, China

    Man Yan

  2. Department of Medicinal Chemistry, Faculty of Pharmacy, Zabol University of Medical Sciences, Zabol, Iran

    Mostafa Heidari Majd

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  1. Man Yan
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Correspondence to Mostafa Heidari Majd.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

This study was approved by the ethical committee of Zabol University of Medical Sciences (IR.ZBMU.REC.1398.088). There is no duplicate publication, fraud, plagiarism, or concerns about animal or human experimentation.

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Yan, M., Majd, M.H. Evaluation of Induced Apoptosis by Biosynthesized Zinc Oxide Nanoparticles in MCF-7 Breast Cancer Cells Using Bak1 and Bclx Expression. Dokl Biochem Biophys 500, 360–367 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1134/S1607672921050148

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