Niosomal Nano-Curcumin-Induced Cell Cycle Arrest and Apoptosis in Brain Cancer Stem Cells

Background and Aim: Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is the mostmalignant tumor with a high mortality rate. An important reason for thehigh recurrence of the tumor is the presence of cancer stem cells (CSCs),which is thought to be the ‘‘root’’ of growing tumors. Targeting these cellsmay provide a useful therapeutic approach. Niosomal nano-curcumin issynthesized from curcumin, an anti-tumor compound, assumed to inhibitcancer stem cells survival. The current study was aimed to investigate theapoptotic role of niosomal nano-curcumin in stem cells isolated from thebrain tumors of patients with glioblastoma.Methods: The cancer stem cells were isolated from the tumor tissuesample. The MTT cell viability assay was used to examine IC50 in 24, 48and 72 hours. The Real-Time PCR assay was also utilized to determinethe mRNA expression of BAX-BCL2. Flow cytometric studies using thepropidium iodide showed accumulation of cells in the sub-G1 phase.Results: In this study, IC50 of the nano-curcumin was determined to be137 μM, 101.4 μM and 32.8 μM in 24, 48 and 72 hours, respectively.Also, we demonstrated that the treatment of GBM stem cells withniosomal nano-curcumin increased the Bax/ Bcl-2 ratio significantly.Additionally, the number of cells in the sub-G1 phase was elevated at 24(P<0.05) hours after treatment.Conclusion: Based on our data, it is anticipated that niosomal nanocurcuminwill perform as a potential therapy owing to improvedcurcumin delivery and therapeutic efficacy on GBM stem cells. Niozomalnano-curcumin may protect against CSCs by causing cell cycle arrest andinducing apoptosis.

کلیدواژه ها:

Stem Cell ، Glioblastoma ، Niosomal nano-curcumin ، Apoptosis ، Cell cycle arrest