Iron overload has been implicated in increase in tumor cell growth and metastasis in various cancers. In this work, we have developed four different tumor targeting bio-organic nanoparticles for iron chelation therapy.  The nanoparticles were developed by synthesizing peptide derivatives of FMOC-based amino acids such as arginine and leucine as well as pyrazole amide derivatives. In general, the nanoparticles were formed in the range of 100 nm to 200 nm.  Furthermore those nanoparticles were tagged with specific peptides that targeted over-expressed transferrin receptors on ovarian tumorigenic cells. We compared the cell-targeting ability by utilizing fluorescent tagged peptides which were attached to the nanoparticles, to examine the endocytosis of the nanoparticles. Cytochrome C oxidase activity, reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation and NADH dehydrogenase activity was measured before and after adding the iron chelating nanoparticles. Mitochondrial damage was also assessed in the presence and absence of the nanoparticles.  Iron chelation was also studied in the absence of cells, where a distinct change in morphology was observed upon chelation and binding interactions were also studied by FTIR spectroscopy.

Design of new FMOC and pyrazole-derived nanoparticles for targeting tumorigenic cells

255th National Meeting (2018)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.