Mitochondrial membrane depolarization and ROS generation by functionalized copper oxide nanoparticles with polylactic acid in breast cancer cells

Abstract

Nanotechnology is an emerging field of science and technology at the nanoscale level. The current study focused on synthesizing copper oxide nanoparticles (CuONPs) from the bacterial cell-free extract. These copper oxides were further conjugated with polylactic acid. The conjugated CuONPs (cCuONPs) were characterized by UV-Vis spectrophotometry, FTIR, TGA, SEM, EDX and TEM.TEM analysis showed the particles are spherical and in the size range 20 – 35 nm. These cCuONPs showed excellent antibacterial effects against various bacterial pathogens. Furthermore, cCuONPs exhibit remarkable toxicity towards MDA-MB-231 cells while less toxic towards normal 3T3 cells through MTT assay. Apoptosis study reveals membrane blebbing and chromatin condensation. cCuONPs showed an excellent release of ROS and arrested the cell cycle at the G2/M phase. cCuONPs showed mitochondrial membrane depolarisation (Δψm) with 43.61% and extensive DNA damage on agarose gel electrophoresis. Therefore, these cCuONPs could become the potential anticancer agent for drug delivery to treat breast cancer and in pharmaceutical and biomedicine applications.