Studies on cancer cell death through delivery of dopamine as anti-cancer drug by a newly functionalized cobalt ferrite nano-carrier

Abstract Recently, a promising applicability of dopamine (DA) as an anticancer drug has been observed because it has an anti-angiogenesis property regulating tumour growth. We have proposed here a new approach for cancer therapy using cobalt-ferrite (CF) nanoparticles as a DA delivery agent by functionalizing CF with DA and polyethylene glycol (PEG). CF was synthesized by simple wet chemical method and its physical properties were investigated by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) to confirm its structural and morphological properties respectively. After that DA was conjugated with CF (CF-DA) and then the CF-DA was polyethylene glycolated (CF-DA-PEG) for better fixing of DA on the CF and to deliver the dopamine very slowly into the cancer cells. FTIR study confirms the adsorption of DA and coating of PEG. We then carried on some experiments on cancer cells treating them with CF, DA, CF-DA, PEG and CF-DA-PEG to investigate and compare their anticancer properties. Detail mechanisms of cancer cell death were investigated by different techniques such as MTT assay, colony formation assay, anti migratory property, cell apoptosis, reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation, actin cytoskeleton disruption, western blot analysis, mitochondrial membrane disruption investigation etc. Our results convey an important message that CF-DA-PEG is able to deliver DA inside the A549 cells and also CF-DA-PEG shows an anti-cancer effect inducing apoptosis through activating the cyrochrome-c and caspase dependent apoptotic pathway and CF catalysed ROS generation.