Doxorubicin-CdS Nanoparticles: A Potential Anticancer Agent for Enhancing the Drug Uptake of Cancer Cells

Abstract

A novel strategy of enhancing the drug uptake by cancer cells through the combination of anticancer drug doxorubicin with cadium sulfide (CdS) nanoparticles has been explored by using confocal fluorescence scanning microscopy as well as electrochemical studies, which demonstrates that CdS nanoparticles can readily conjugate with doxorubicin on the targeted cancer cells and facilitate the uptake of drug molecules in the human leukemia K562 cells. Besides, our observations also indicate that the aggregation of the leukemia cells occured when CdS nanoparticles were introduced into the relative target system together with doxorubicin, suggesting that the specific association of CdS nanoparticles with biologically active molecules on the surface of leukemia K562 cells may change some biorecognition or signal transfer pathway among cancer cells. It is suggested that the competitive binding of CdS nanoparticles with accompanying anticancer drug to the membrane of leukemia K562 cells could efficiently prevent the drug release by the drug resistant leukemia cells and thus inhibit the relative multidrug resistance (MDR) of targeted cancer cells.