Effect of methotrexate conjugated PAMAM dendrimers on the viability of breast cancer cells

Nanotechnology in recent years, by using nanoparticles (Np) has emerged as an alternative diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer, being this the most common invasive cancer in women in the world. The most used treatment for this disease is chemotherapy, being highly toxic and unsafe causing adverse effects or death in patients. Dendrimeric Np have shown being efficient carriers of chemotherapeutic drugs and can be highly specific when they are conjugated with molecules that are recognized by cancerous cells. The aim of this study was to determine the efficiency of the methotrexate (MTX) conjugated to PAMAM dendrimer nanoparticle (Np-MTX) in the elimination of breast cancer cells. For this, it was synthesized and functionalized a dendrimer Np with MTX. The percentage of encapsulation for MTX measured by HPLC was 59 %. By infrared spectroscopy (IR-KBr) the expected peaks for secondary amide extension at 3401cm ^-1 and 1604cm-1were found. From transmission electron microscopy (TEM) analyses, average sizes of 7.6nm for Np and 8.5 for Np-MTX conjugate were determined. The condition with the greatest decrease in viability (50 %) was 423.6μg/mL at 4h. The MDA-MB-231 breast cancer cells had 2 times more decrease in viability with the Np-MTX conjugate than with MTX alone and there was no significant decrease in the HaCaT non-cancerous cells in any of the trials (p>0.05), being a potential treatment for triple negative breast cancer and other diseases.