Photodynamic therapy associated with ionizing radiation in the treatment of triple-negative breast cancer cells

Abstract

Breast cancer is the most common cancer for women worldwide. According to the World Health Organization, it is considered the 5 th leading cause of death from cancer. Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is a subtype of this disease that represents around 20% of all invasive breast cancer, whose main characteristics are resistance to conventional treatments, such as exposure to ionizing radiation (IR). On the order hand, the photodynamic therapy (PDT) using porphyrins and their derivatives has been described in the literature as a potential therapy against cancer. Thus, our goal in this work was to associate PDT and IR in the treatment of TNBC. MDA-MB-231 cells at a concentration of 2x104 cells were submitted to PDT using TMPyP porphyrin (30 μM) and a red light (660 ±11 nm) with fluences of the 23 and 57.5 J/cm 2 (57.3 mW/cm 2). Immediately post-PDT, cells were divided into groups: non-treated (control), only IR and PDT associated with IR (PDT57+IR and PDT23+IR) and then, exposed to IR with a dose of 2.5 Gy. Past 24-h of the PDT-session, the cell viability, clonogenicity and total glutathione were verified. Cells exposed to IR not presented statistically significance difference compared to the control group. However, treated groups showed around 38% lower cell viability in relation to the control and IR groups. For the clonogenic assay a reduction of the approximately 65% was observed between IR and treated groups. Regarding to the total glutathione, all groups showed an increase when compared to control group. Nonetheless, no were identified differences between IR and treated groups. Taken together, our results indicate that PDT associate with IR may be an ally in TNBC treatment.