https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/s13360-023-04737-0
Regular Article
Plasma needle-induced cell cycle arrest of human lung carcinoma cells A549 via p21-dependent pathway
1
Institute of Physics, University of Belgrade, Pregrevica 118, 11080, Belgrade, Serbia
2
Department of Experimental Oncology, Institute for Oncology and Radiology of Serbia, Pasterova 14, 11000, Belgrade, Serbia
3
Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Knez Mihailova 35, 11000, Belgrade, Serbia
4
School of Engineering, Ulster University, Jordanstown, Co., BT37 0QB, Antrim, UK
g z.petrovic@ulster.ac.uk, zoran@ipb.ac.rs
Received:
19
August
2023
Accepted:
23
November
2023
Published online:
7
December
2023
Low temperature plasma (LTP) sources, which operate at atmospheric pressure, can produce reactive oxygen and nitrogen species (ROS and RNS) that have a potential to induce cancer cell death. Numerous scientific papers indicate that the cell death mechanisms following LTP treatment vary with both cell type and plasma source used. In this study, we apply plasma needle suitable for direct treatment of biological samples with the power delivered to the plasma precisely controlled. Furthermore, we investigated the effect of our plasma on human cancer cell lines (HeLa and A549) and normal cells (BEAS-2B). The investigation of cytotoxic activity confirmed the cytotoxic potential of our plasma needle, with lower sensitivity toward normal cells, and a higher sensitivity toward cancer cell lines. Further investigation of the effect on cell cycle in resistant A549 cell line showed a decrease in the number of cells in the G0/G1 phase and arrest of cell cycle in the G2/M phase. A significant overexpression of the cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor 1 (p21) was also observed at the genetic level in a power dependent manner. However, there was no reduction in growth of A549 cells in a 3D cell culture of multicellular tumor spheroids (MCTS) after plasma treatment under investigated experimental conditions. Our results show that the redesigned plasma source has a potential to inhibit proliferation of A549 lung adenocarcinoma cells in vitro, induce their apoptosis and also a combined treatment with PARP (poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase), inhibitor enhanced the effect of LTP.
Nenad Selaković and Nevenka Gligorijević have contributed equally to this work.
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© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Società Italiana di Fisica and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2023. Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
