The Impacts of Prepared Plasma-Activated Medium (PAM) Combined with Doxorubicin on the Viability of MCF-7 Breast Cancer Cells: A New Cancer Treatment Strategy

For many years, the chemotherapeutic agent doxorubicin (DOX) has been used to treat various cancers; however, DOX initiates several critical adverse effects. Many studies have reported that non-thermal atmospheric pressure plasma can provide novel, but challenging, treatment strategies for cancer patients. To date, tissues and cells have been treated with plasma-activated medium (PAM) as a practical therapy. Consequently, due to the harmful adverse effects of DOX, we were motivated to elucidate the impact of PAM in the presence of DOX on MCF-7 cell proliferation.

MTT assay, N-acetyl-L-cysteine (NAC) assay, and flow cytometry analysis were utilized in this research. 

The results demonstrated that 0.45 μM DOX combined with 3-min PAM significantly induced apoptosis (p< 0.01) through intracellular ROS generation in MCF-7 when compared with 0.45 μM DOX alone or 3-min PAM alone. In contrast, after treatment with 0.45 μM DOX plus 4-min PAM, cell necrosis was increased. Hence, DOX combined with 4-min PAM has cytotoxic effects with different mechanisms than 4-min PAM alone, in which the number of apoptotic cells increases.

Although further investigations are crucial, low doses of DOX plus 3-min PAM could be a promising strategy for cancer therapy. The findings from this research may offer advantageous and innovative clinical strategies for cancer therapy using PAM.