Cinnamon oil nanoemulsion as a novel nanocarrier for bleomycin amplifies its apoptotic effect on SKOV-3 ovarian cancer cells

Abstract

Loading the chemotherapeutic agents in nanoemulsions system has recently gained attraction in medicine due to their ability to improve the drug’s efficacy and reduce its adverse effects. In this context, here, we loaded bleomycin (BLM) in nanoemulsion (NE) consisting of cinnamon oil in order to evaluate its antineoplastic effect on the SKOV-3 cells. The produced NE formulas were physically characterized by the zetasizer. The cytotoxic activities of BLM and NE formulas were examined by CCK-8 kit, Coomassie blue staining for the visualization of the morphological changes, Annexin V-FITC for identifying apoptosis and cell death detection ELISA plus kit for DNA fragmentation measurement. The average droplet diameter of the blank NE (450.90±1.57 nm) was increased when loaded with BLM (522.57±0.85 nm) while the magnitude of the negative zeta potential of the loaded formula (0.381±0.003 mV) was less than the blank NE (1.01±0.020 mV). The potential cytotoxicity of the BLM-NE was significantly greater than the toxicities of the free BLM and blank NE. The blank NE and BLM-NE have the greatest apoptotic effect and higher enrichment factor compared to free BLM. Loading BLM in NE based on cinnamon oil has considerably improved its efficacy as an anticancer drug on the SKOV-3 cells.