Treatment on Neuroblastoma Cancer Cells Using Atmospheric Cold Plasma

Abstract

Non-thermal atmospheric plasma is an ambient temperature ionized gas acquiring significant attention as a favorable addition to anti-tumor treatment mainly due to the capability to produce and regulate delivery of ions, excited molecules, UV photons, and reactive species such as reactive oxygen species (ROS) and reactive nitrogen species (RNS) to a targeted site. The heterogeneous composition of non-thermal atmospheric plasma offers the opportunity to intervene numerous signaling pathways that control tumor cells. Subsequently, the array of non-thermal atmospheric plasma generated products has limited the identification of the mechanisms of action on tumor cells. In this work, we will present the results of non-thermal plasma jet treated on neuroblastoma cells using a murine neuroblastoma line derived from AJ mice and cultured in D10 media. The goal of this work is to determine the cell death response of neuroblastoma cells by using a non-thermal plasma jet. The effect of variable treatment dosage levels of non-thermal plasma was tested in neuroblastoma cells. The number of viable cells was evaluated, while apoptosis and necrosis was assessed. Our observations indicate that increased treatment dosage levels of non-thermal plasma jet caused varied results from no significant changes to apoptotic characteristics to induction of necrosis at extended dosages. Overall the results suggest that non-thermal plasma jet can be of significant application to the treatment of neuroblastoma cancer cells.