Investigation of Combination Effect of Doxorubicin and Zinc Oxide Nanoparticles on the Expression of Long non-coding RNA INXS in MCF-7 Breast Cancer Cells

The combined therapy of cancer is more effective than using a single drug to treat cancer. In this study, we investigated the anticancer effects of doxorubicin and doxorubicin in combination with zinc oxide nanoparticles on the MCF-7 breast cancer cells.

 MCF-7 cells were cultured in RPMI1640 medium. The number of viable cells and the activity of mitochondrial dehydrogenase enzyme were evaluated by MTT assay for 24, 48 and 72 hours and IC50 was determined. RNA was extracted and then cDNA was synthesized. Specific primers for the INXS and TBP genes were designed using proprietary software. The expression level of INXS gene was compared to TBP reference gene using Real-Time PCR method was assessed.

The expression of the INXS gene in doxorubicin-treated MCF-7 cells at 24, 48 and 72 hours was 7.93, 1.71 and 0.19, respectively, and in doxorubicin-treated cells with Zinc oxide nanoparticles was changed 1.81, 6.34 and 15.96 at 24, 48 and 72 hours, respectively.

in this study, it has been shown that simultaneous treatment with doxorubicin and Zinc oxide nanoparticles at low concentration (3.125 and 6.25) can cause more cell death than doxorubicin treatment alone. This may be due to the facilitation of doxorubicin entry into the cell in the presence of zinc oxide nanoparticles.