Dual action of RONS/Biomolecule-loaded hydrogels: killing cancer cells and enhancing stem cells viability

Abstract

In last decade, non-thermal plasma has demonstrated to be a very promising technology in the field of cancer therapy. It is known that plasma can generate a complex cocktail of chemically reactive species, which can interact with living cells and tissues, thus exerting many biological effects on cells. Among these reactive species, reactive oxygen and nitrogen species (RONS) have been shown to selectively kill cancer cells without damaging the surrounding tissues. However, the way to deliver plasma-derived RONS on a patient is still challenging. Recently, some studies demonstrated that RONS can be transferred into solutions of biomolecules with the ability to form hydrogels. In this sense, these hydrogels allow to create a biocompatible system to generate and release RONS, thus resulting in an ideal RONS delivery approach for cancer treatment. In this line, the aim of this work is to develop dual action hydrogels containing plasma-derived RONS as anticancer agents for bone cancer treatment, and biomolecules with the ability to favour the survival of healthy and stimulate the patient’ bone tissue regeneration processes. To this purpose, the biological effect of different RONS/biomolecule-loaded hydrogels was evaluated on two different cell lines: human bone cancer MG-63 cells, and bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells (BM-MSCs). First, we performed a physicochemical characterization of the studied formulations to optimize the plasma treatment conditions and maximize the amount of RONS generated. The cell viability and proliferation recorded after exposing both type of cells to the developed RONS/biomolecule-loaded hydrogels indicate promising applications in plasma medicine

Peer Reviewed

Objectius de Desenvolupament Sostenible::3 - Salut i Benestar

Postprint (published version)