Physiochemical characterization and cytotoxicity evaluation of mercury-based formulation for the development of anticancer therapeuticals

作者：Kannan N; Sundar Shanmuga S; Balaji S^*; Amuthan Arul; Kumar Anil N V; Balasubramanian N

来源：PLos One, 2018, 13(4): e0195800.

DOI：10.1371/journal.pone.0195800

Background
The present study is aimed to evaluate the physiochemical properties and cytotoxicity of mercury-based formulation for the development of anticancer therapeuticals.
Methods
The elemental and morphological features of the formulation were characterized by FE-SEM, XPS and EDS. The described formulation was evaluated for its cytotoxicity on Hek293 and MCF7 cell lines using MTT assay to study the in vitro effects. The in vivo developmental toxicity was also studied on zebrafish embryos and the lethal concentration (LC50) values were calculated as per the OECD regulations.
Results
The elemental and morphological characterizations confirmed the presence of mercuric compounds. The particles were spherical and stable with the size ranges between 20 and 80nm. Although the PK formulation contains mercurials it was very effective only to cancerous cells (MCF-7) and it is less toxic to normal cells (HEK 293). The in vivo assessment of developmental toxicity on zebrafish embryo confirmed the safer dosage of 100 mu g/ml. However, a higher dosage of 1 mg/ml led to the malformation of embryos such as pericardial, tail and yolk sac edema.
Conclusion
The physiochemical characterization of PK formulation confirmed the presence of HgS. The results of both in vitro and in vivo studies showed that the formulation is less toxic. Although the test sample contains mercurials it was very effective against cancerous cells (MCF-7) and it is less toxic to normal cells (HEK 293).

• 出版日期2018-4-18