Journal of Nanomedicine & Nanotechnology

Abstract

Combination Paclitaxel and Laser-Activated Nano Therapy for Inducing Cell Death in Head and Neck Squamous Cell Carcinoma

Mohamed Mubasher, Brian P. Pollack, Tamra McKenzie, Maya B. Cothran, Hadiyah N. Green

Combination, adjuvant, and neoadjuvant therapies have been emerging as practical approaches to increase the efficacy of lower drug doses, decrease side effects, and improve overall survival outcomes, especially for patients with difficult-to-treat tumors. Our work focuses on combining paclitaxel (PTX) with Laser-Activated NanoTherapy (LANT) as an adjuvant therapy to enhance the therapeutic efficacy of lower doses of PTX for treating head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC). The results demonstrated the potential of the PTX and LANT combination for treating HNSCC using three cell lines: Detroit 562, FaDu, and CAL 27. The 1 nM PTX + 5 nM LANT combination was the most effective treatment for all cell lines, showing up to 89.8% of cell death in CAL 27. The 1 nM PTX + 5 nM LANT combination also produced the greatest PTX dose reduction for Detroit 562 and CAL 27, resulting in an 86.0% and 86.8% decrease, from the 7.1 nM and 7.6 nM of PTX monotreatment respectively. For FaDu, the 0.5 nM PTX + 5 nM combination had the greatest dose reduction, resulting in an 80.8% decrease, from the 2.6 nM of PTX monotreatment. The results suggest that LANT may boost the therapeutic efficacy of low doses of PTX and induce the same percentage of cell death as high doses of PTX monotreatment. Therefore, these in vitro findings may lower PTX dosages and lead to improved patient outcomes.

Published Date: 2021-01-29;