Fateme Mohammadnejad

Bio: Fateme Mohammadnejad is an academic researcher from Tabriz University of Medical Sciences. The author has contributed to research in topics: Cytotoxic T cell & Photodynamic therapy. The author has an hindex of 2, co-authored 4 publications receiving 33 citations.

The interaction between the light source dose and caspase-dependent and -independent apoptosis in human SK-MEL-3 skin cancer cells following photodynamic therapy with zinc phthalocyanine: A comparative study.

Abstract: The aim of this study is to determine the behavior of relative expression of Bcl-2, caspase-8, caspase-9, and caspase-3 genes of/in SK-MEL-3 cancer cells and explore molecular mechanisms responsible for the apoptosis response during an in vitro photodynamic therapy (PDT) with Zinc Phthalocyanine (ZnPc) using different doses of the light source. In this study, firstly the cytotoxic effects of ZnPc-PDT on SK-MEL-3 cells were evaluated. By irradiating the laser, ZnPc induced a significant amount of apoptosis on SK-MEL-3 cells in three IC50s including 0.064±0.01, 0.043±0.01, and 0.036±0.01μg/mL at the doses of 8, 16, and 24J/cm2, respectively. Moreover, flow cytometry and QRT-PCR experiments were done. The high percentage of apoptotic cells was seen in the early apoptosis stage. The expression of Bcl-2 and caspase-8 genes at all doses of laser experienced an obvious reduction in comparison to the control group. On the other hand, although the expression of caspase-9 and caspase-3 genes remains almost constant at 8J/cm2, but they faced an increment at 16 and 24J/cm2 doses. These data reveal caspase-dependent apoptosis in high and caspase-independent apoptosis in low doses of laser. Based on the results of present work, it can be suggested that the dose of the light source is a key factor in induction of caspase-dependent and caspase-independent apoptosis pathways following PDT.

Photodynamic Therapy with Zinc Phthalocyanine Inhibits the Stemness and Development of Colorectal Cancer: Time to Overcome the Challenging Barriers?

Abstract: Photodynamic therapy (PDT) is a light-based cancer therapy approach that has shown promising results in treating various malignancies. Growing evidence indicates that cancer stem cells (CSCs) are implicated in tumor recurrence, metastasis, and cancer therapy resistance in colorectal cancer (CRC); thus, targeting these cells can ameliorate the prognosis of affected patients. Based on our bioinformatics results, SOX2 overexpression is significantly associated with inferior disease-specific survival and worsened the progression-free interval of CRC patients. Our results demonstrate that zinc phthalocyanine (ZnPc)-PDT with 12 J/cm2 or 24 J/cm2 irradiation can substantially decrease tumor migration via downregulating MMP9 and ROCK1 and inhibit the clonogenicity of SW480 cells via downregulating CD44 and SOX2. Despite inhibiting clonogenicity, ZnPc-PDT with 12 J/cm2 irradiation fails to downregulate CD44 expression in SW480 cells. Our results indicate that ZnPc-PDT with 12 J/cm2 or 24 J/cm2 irradiation can substantially reduce the cell viability of SW480 cells and stimulate autophagy in the tumoral cells. Moreover, our results show that ZnPc-PDT with 12 J/cm2 or 24 J/cm2 irradiation can substantially arrest the cell cycle at the sub-G1 level, stimulate the intrinsic apoptosis pathway via upregulating caspase-3 and caspase-9 and downregulating Bcl-2. Indeed, our bioinformatics results show considerable interactions between the studied CSC-related genes with the studied migration- and apoptosis-related genes. Collectively, the current study highlights the potential role of ZnPc-PDT in inhibiting stemness and CRC development, which can ameliorate the prognosis of CRC patients.

Potential of Cyanine Derived Dyes in Photodynamic Therapy.

Abstract: Photodynamic therapy (PDT) is a method of cancer treatment that leads to the disintegration of cancer cells and has developed significantly in recent years. The clinically used photosensitizers are primarily porphyrin, which absorbs light in the red spectrum and their absorbance maxima are relatively short. This review presents group of compounds and their derivatives that are considered to be potential photosensitizers in PDT. Cyanine dyes are compounds that typically absorb light in the visible to near-infrared-I (NIR-I) spectrum range (750-900 nm). This meta-analysis comprises the current studies on cyanine dye derivatives, such as indocyanine green (so far used solely as a diagnostic agent), heptamethine and pentamethine dyes, squaraine dyes, merocyanines and phthalocyanines. The wide array of the cyanine derivatives arises from their structural modifications (e.g., halogenation, incorporation of metal atoms or organic structures, or synthesis of lactosomes, emulsions or conjugation). All the following modifications aim to increase solubility in aqueous media, enhance phototoxicity, and decrease photobleaching. In addition, the changes introduce new features like pH-sensitivity. The cyanine dyes involved in photodynamic reactions could be incorporated into sets of PDT agents.

Nanosilver-enhanced AIE photosensitizer for simultaneous bioimaging and photodynamic therapy

Abstract: Theranostic photosensitizers which enable both disease diagnosis and effective treatment have recently received much attention towards personalized medicine. Herein, we report a multifunctional nanohybrid system using silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) to enhance the singlet oxygen generation (SOG) and fluorescence properties of a unique photosensitizer with aggregation-induced emission (AIE-PS) for simultaneous bioimaging and photodynamic therapy. To study the metal-enhancement effects, 4-mercaptobenzoic acid-capped AgNPs with well-controlled size (14, 40, and 80 nm) were synthesized to form nanohybrids with a specially designed red-emissive AIE-PS via simple electrostatic interactions. The careful control of the Ag nanoparticle concentration and the unique design of 80 nm AgNP@red-emissive AIE in this study resulted in a 10-fold enhancement in SOG, which is higher than other reported ME-SOG systems using similar plasmonic enhancers. Furthermore, the as-developed AgNP@AIE-PS nanohybrid exhibited improved photostability with negligible fluorescence quenching (5%), which is important for cell tracking. In addition, cytotoxity tests showed that these nanohybrids are biocompatibile with normal NIH-3T3 cells under dark conditions. Thus, they were employed for simultaneous imaging and photodynamic ablation of HeLa cancer cells. The results show that this brightly fluorescent AgNP@AIE-PS enabled about 4 times higher efficacy in PDT as compared to the control sample (i.e., 85% vs. 20% cell death) under low intensity white light irradiation (40 mW cm−2) for only 10 minutes, demonstrating its promising potential for advanced theranostic treatment in future nanomedicine.