Research On The Effects Of Curcumin And Carbon Dots On The Biophysical Properties Of SH-SY5Y Cells

Human neuroblastoma cells have been widely used as model cells in understanding of the pathogenesis of,and the drug effects on neurodegenerative diseases.Curcumin is a broad-spectrum anti-tumor drug in cancer prevention due to its little toxcity and side effects on normal cells.Therefore,it has a good application prospect in the study of neurodegenerative diseases.Carbon dots are a new type of fluorescent nanoparticles,with many unique advantages such as small particle size,strong penetrability,adjustable emission spectrum,easy for surface functionalization,etc.,and it has a good a pplication prospect in the research of neurodegenerative diseases.Atomic force microscope(AFM)is a powerful tool for cell morphology imaging and mechanical measurement with high resolution and is regarded as a reliable advanced technique for exploring the biophysical properties of cells,such as elastic deformation,plastic deformation,plasticity index,adhesion work,etc.In this work,cell viability assays and atomic force microscopy were used to analyze the biophysical properties of SH-SY5 Y cells before and after the treatment with curcumin or carbon dots,in order to investigate the effects of curcumin or carbon dots on SH-SY5 Y cells.The results show that the cells treated with 16 ?g/mL of curcumin for 24 h have worse adherent ability to the surface of petri-dish and changed biophysical properties including increased elastic deformation,decreased plastic deformation and smaller plasticity index and adhesion work,compared with the cells without the treatment by curcumin.The cells treated with 50 ?g/mL of carbon dots for 6h showed no significant difference in both the elastic deformation and plasticity index,compared with the cells without the treatment by carbon dots.However,the cell elastic deformation was significantly decreased and the cell plasticity index was remarkably increased after the cells were treated with 75 ?g/mL of carbon dots for 6h.The adhesion work increased with the concentration of carbon dots.This study provided solid evidence that anti-tumor drug,i.e.,curcumin has excellent killing ability on SH-SY5 Y cells.The effects of carbon dots on t he cell viability and biophysical properties present a dose-dependent manner and no significant effects on cell activity and biophysical properties were observed when the concentration of carbon dots was lower than 50 ?g/mL.Our work provided useful information on the utilization of curcumin and/or carbon dots in the study of SH-SY5 Y cells.