Anti-Acute Monocytic Leukemia Activities of Selenium Nanoparticles Embedded in Nanotube Consisted of Triple-Helix β-D-Glucan

Acute monocytic leukemia (AML-M5) is a subtype of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) which has the characteristics of high degree of malignancy, prone to extramedullary infiltration, poor efficacy of conventional chemotherapy, easy recurrence, etc. Besides, chemotherapy has large side effects and high cost. Therefore, it is urgent to find natural, non-toxic and cheap drugs for the treatment of AML-M5.

Polysaccharide is a class of natural macromolecular substances with biological activities such as immune regulation, anti-tumor, anti-oxidation, anti-virus, and hypoglycemic activity. Selenium is a component of human erythrocyte glutathione peroxidase, it participates in the metabolism of peroxide and iodine in the body, regulates the level of iodine and free radicals in the organism, and can enhance the body's ability to prevent and resist diseases. LNT-Se has the activity of SeNPs and the physiological function of polysaccharide.Due to the self-assembly behavior of rigid triple helix β-glucan (LNT) extracted from Lentinus edodes in aqueous solution, Selenium nanoparticles (SeNPs) could be encapsulated in the cavities of hollow nanotubes consisted of LNT to form stable complexes (LNT-Se) with high dispersity and biocompatibility. It could significantly improve the safety, biocompatibility and anti-tumor activity of SeNPs, and had powerful applications in the field of nanomaterials.

In this study, we found that LNT-Se could inhibit the proliferation of AML-M5 cell lines such as THP-1, Molm-13, MV-4-11 and greatly promote the apoptosis of AML-M5 cell lines and M5 patient cells, and obviously block cells in the G2/M phase. It had little toxicity to normal cell lines, hematopoietic stem cells (HSC) and healthy human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC). Besides, we used a novel optofluidics chips wth diffused total internal reflection (TIR) method to capture single Molm-13 GFP + cell, and at the same time detected the signal intensity changes of GFP at different drug concentrations. At the single-cell level, We also observed the swelling, lysis and fluorescence intensity of the cells after treatment.

Therefore, it's a promising drug for the treatment of AML-M5. These findings indicate that LNT-Se inhibit theproliferation of leukemia cell and it can be a natural inducer for therapy of AML.