The phenotype of target pancreatic cancer cells influences cell death by magnetic hyperthermia with nanoparticles carrying gemicitabine and the pseudo-peptide NucAnt.

In this paper we show that conjugation of magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) with Gemcitabine and/or NucAnt (N6L) fostered their internalization into pancreatic tumor cells and that the coupling procedure did not alter the cytotoxic potential of the drugs. By treating tumor cells (BxPC3 and PANC-1) with the conjugated MNPs and magnetic hyperthermia (43 °C, 60 min), cell death was observed. The two pancreatic tumor cell lines showed different reactions against the combined therapy according to their intrinsic sensitivity against Gemcitabine (cell death, ROS production, ability to activate ERK 1/2 and JNK). Finally, tumors (e.g. 3 mL) could be effectively treated by using almost 4.2 × 10⁵ times lower Gemcitabine doses compared to conventional therapies. Our data show that this combinatorial therapy might well play an important role in certain cell phenotypes with low readiness of ROS production. This would be of great significance in distinctly optimizing local pancreatic tumor treatments. Combinatorial therapies using iron oxide-based magnetic hyperthermia play an important role in pancreatic tumor cell phenotypes particularly with low readiness of ROS production, which is of great significance in distinctly optimizing local pancreatic tumor treatments. Blue dots: Gemcitabine, yellow dots: pseudo-peptide NucAnt. Unlabelled Image [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]