الفهرس 
INTRODUCTIONOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) remains one of the most difficult malignancies to control because of its high ability for local invasion and metastasis. Despite the advances in therapeutic strategies (surgery followed by combined radio-chemotherapy), the prognosis is still poor. The survival rates have not changed during the last 20 years, with high mortality rates.
Herbal medicine is the fulcrum of complementary and alternative medicine. Worldwide, it is gaining widespread popularity and recently it has been integrated into the mainstream healthcare systems. In cancer prevention and treatment, natural products have attracted wide attention as they are cost-effective, readily available, non-toxic, and highly potent agents, with fewer adverse effects than synthetic drugs. One of the promising herbal candidates is curcumin; it exhibits a unique anticancer activity through the induction of apoptosis, inhibition of proliferation, and prevention of invasion, without delirious effect on the adjacent healthy cells.
Curcumin, despite its promising properties, has poor water-solubility as well as low chemical stability, which hinder its biological use. Curcumin synthesis in nanoscale overcomes the problem of its poor water-solubility, increasing its bioavailability and therapeutic efficacy. Moreover, the water-soluble nanosized curcumin exhibits characteristic luminescent optical properties that can be safely utilized in diagnostic nanomedicine.
In the current study, curcumin nanoparticles are synthesized by solvent anti-solvent precipitation method, it is one of the promising bottom-up approaches for nanocurcumin preparation. The basic principle of this method is dissolving curcumin in an organic solvent, and then mixing the curcumin solvent solution with an anti-solvent under constant rate and time of stirring. However, the solvent anti-solvent precipitation method has many variables that constrain its reproducibility and affect the sample stability.
The objective of the current study was to optimize a simple, achievable, and reproducible method for the preparation of curcumin nanoparticles with superior yielding capacity and stability. After gaining the optimized biocompatible nanocurcumin, the anti-cancer effect of the synthesized nanocurcumin versus curcumin powder against oral squamous cell carcinoma cell line was assessed through cytotoxic assay to calculate and verify the IC50, flow cytometer assay to detect apoptosis, and wound healing assay to determine the anti-migratory effect.
The cytotoxic effect of nanocurcumin was in a dose-depended manner, by increasing the concentration of nanocurcumin, the cell viability continued to decrease significantly. Moreover, curcumin at low concentrations revealed a significant decrease in cell viability. A pattern that was reversed upon increasing the concentration of curcumin, where the curcumin became incompletely solubilized, forming the precipitated crystals.
The flow cytometer results of nanocurcumin revealed a significant increase in the early and late apoptosis at the early incubation period, while in the late incubation period late apoptosis was prominent. On the other hand, curcumin demonstrated apoptosis mainly late-stage and necrosis, while in the late incubation period curcumin revealed only necrosis.
The anti-migratory results revealed a significant increase in the wound gap in the nanocurcumin treated group after 6h and 24h incubation period and after 48h the width of the cell-free zone was immeasurable. The cytotoxic effect of nanocurcumin led to cell death, therefore almost no cells have remained for measurement. In the curcumin-treated group, the width of the cell-free zone slightly increased after 6h and then significantly reduced after 24h, 48h, and 72h.
from the results of the current study, nanocurcumin proved a strong anti-tumorigenic effect against oral squamous cell carcinoma cell line. This promising herbal nanocandidate opens a new gate in combating cancer, overcoming the unavoidable delirious side effect of the traditional method of cancer treatment. nanocurcumin has a similar potent cytotoxic effect to doxorubicin against oral cancer cells, with a prominent apoptotic effect in contrast to doxorubicin, which revealed necrosis. Moreover, nanocurcumin proved a potent anti-migratory effect against oral cancer cells, with a similar degree to doxorubicin.