Electroporation-mediated Metformin for effective anticancer treatment of triple-negative breast cancer cells

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that electroporation enhances the anticancer efficacy of Metformin against triple-negative breast cancer cells, significantly reducing cell viability compared to drug treatment alone.

Contribution

It introduces a novel combination of electroporation with Metformin to improve its anticancer effects on TNBC cells.

Findings

Electroporation with Metformin reduces TNBC cell viability to 43.45%.

Metformin alone results in 85.20% cell viability at 5mM.

Electroporation significantly enhances Metformin's anticancer efficacy.

Abstract

In this research, we investigated the efficacy of Metformin, the most commonly administered type-2 diabetes drug for triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) treatment, due to its various anticancer properties. It is a plant-based bio-compound, synthesized as a novel biguanide, called dimethyl biguanide or metformin. One of the ways it operates is by hindering electron transport chain-complex I, in mitochondria, which causes a drop-in energy (ATP) generation. This eventually builds energetic stress and a decline in energy. Therefore, the natural cellular processes and proliferating tumor cells are obstructed. Here, we used electroporation, where, the MDA-MB-231, human TNBC cells were subjected to high intensity, short-duration electrical pulses (EP) in the presence of Metformin. The cell viability results indicate lower cell viability of 43.45% as compared to 85.20% with drug alone at 5mM concentration. This indicates that Metformin, the most common diabetes drug could also be explored for cancer treatment.