Anticancer Impact and FOXM1 Regulation of Zinc Oxide Nanoparticles on HCT116 Colorectal Carcinoma Cell Line

Abstract

The second leading cause of mortality throughout the world is colorectal cancer (CRC), and the existing treating of this situation needs to be improved. Many efforts had been focused on the therapeutic approach of cancer for a long time studying nanoparticles activity. In this study, zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZnO-NPs) were applied against the HCT116 colorectal carcinoma cell line. Methods of current work were included in vitro ZnO-NPs cytotoxicity by thiazolyl blue tetrazolium bromide (MTT) cytotoxicity test on the HCT116 cells in comparison with standard chemotherapeutic drugs that were included Doxorubicin (DOX), cyclophosphamide (CPH) and 5-fluorouracil (5-FU), furthermore, the assessment of Forehead box M1 gene (FOXM1) expression was evaluated using Livak method based on Real-time PCR technique. Results showed that ZnO?NPs were effectively and significantly inhibited the cell proliferation (p<0.0005) by decreasing the viability of the HCT116 cells at different concentrations involved 1, 10, 100, 500 and 1000 μg/ml, with 27.327 μg/ml half-maximal inhibitory concentration (IC50). DOX, CPH, 5-FU IC50 values were 51.112, 30.897μg/ml and 39.72 μg/ml respectively. While FOXM expression in HCT116 cell line revealed a significant effect of down regulation after treatment with different concentrations of ZnO-NPs when compared with untreated cells; (highest relative expression equal to 1.45555E-06) as compared with untreated cells (relative expression =2.462288827). Our finding that ZnO-NPs nanoparticles have an anticancer effect against HCT116 colorectal carcinoma with FOXM1down regulation.