Fe 3 O 4 nanoparticles and cryoablation enhance ice crystal formation to improve the efficiency of killing breast cancer cells

// Ping Ye 1, 3, * , Yu Kong 4, * , Xiaojing Chen 1, 2, * , Weijie Li 3 , Dejun Liu 1, 2 , Yuexia Xie 1, 2 , Yan Zhou 1, 2 , Hanbing Zou 1, 2 , Zhaohua Chang 3 , Huili Dai 1, 2 , Xianming Kong 1, 2, 5 , Peifeng Liu 1, 2 1 Central Laboratory, Ren Ji Hospital, School of Medicine, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200127, China 2 State Key Laboratory of Oncogenes and Related Genes, Shanghai Cancer Institute, Ren Ji Hospital, School of Medicine, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200032, China 3 Shanghai Institute for Minimally Invasive Therapy, School of Medical Instrument and Food Engineering, Shanghai University of Science and Technology, Shanghai 200093, China 4 Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200031, China 5 Tumor Hospital, Xinjiang Medical University, Xinjiang 830000, China * These authors have contributed equally to this work Correspondence to: Huili Dai, email: dhl_sh@163.com Xianming Kong, email: kxm666@aliyun.com Peifeng Liu, email: liupeifeng@yahoo.com Keywords: cryoablation, nanoparticles, breast cancer, recrystallization, killing efficiency Received: June 08, 2016     Accepted: November 22, 2016     Published: December 10, 2016 ABSTRACT The key problem of cryoablation is that only freezing is often unable to kill the capillaries at tumor edges, leading to a high rate of recurrence. Here, we found that Fe 3 O 4 nanoparticles were highly useful to improve the freezing capability of cryosurgery due to their ability to alter intracellular ice formation (IIF) and growth in tumor cells. The killing efficiency of cryoablation for MCF-7 breast cancer cells can be expected to be enhanced as the Fe 3 O 4 nanoparticles concentration increased, it was mainly because that more IIF was induced by the participation of Fe 3 O 4 nanoparticles during freezing, recrystallization and thawing. Furthermore, our results also showed that recrystallization contributed to the formation of extracellular embryonic crystals, which was capable of enhancing the efficiency of killing MCF-7 cells. This research is to develop an understanding of the mechanism of the cryoablation enhancing the killing efficiency in the presence of the Fe 3 O 4 nanoparticles, and to promote their further application in tumor therapy.