Cytotoxicity Study of Gold Nanoparticles on the Basal-Like Triple-Negative HCC-1937 Breast Cancer Cell Line

The Triple Negative “Basal-like”breast cancer (TNBL) tumours have a high proliferativecapacity and develop a resistance phenotype associated with metastases. However, the management of TNBLcarcinomas is still not standardized. Amongthe promising trails, gold nanoparticles could be a relevant tool for thedevelopment of a targeted treatment for this breast cancer subtype inmonotherapy, associated and/or conjugated with other drugs. In this work, wereport the cytotoxicity impact of gold nanoparticles wrapped in Poly-EthyleneGlycol (PEG) on the TNBL HCC-1937 breast cancer cell line. PEG-coated gold nanoparticles (PEG-Au NPs) weresynthesized by a two-step method usinga reduction process followed by a post-functionalization called PEGylation.PEG-Au NPs were characterized using transmission electron microscopyand X-ray diffraction. The gold content of the samples was determinedusing atomic absorption spectrometer. The cytotoxicity tests were performed using Sulforhodamine B survival testand resazurin viability test. PEG-Au NPs impact analysis on HCC1937 TNBL cellline showed a clear toxic action of type dose dependent and at long term. ThesePEGylated gold nanoparticles present a promising tool for the development oftumor-specific radiosensitizing vectors, with or without the associationof other treatment strategies.