Phototoxic effects of low level laser irradiation on human osteosarcoma cells

ABSTRACT

Photodynamic therapy(PDT) has advanced to clinical trials for the treatment of a variety of solid tumors and presents an alternative treatment option for tumors resistant to chemo-and/or radio-therapy. PDT is based on the combination of laser light of appropriate wavelength and energy to activate a systemically or locally applied photosensitizer that concentrates preferentially in malignant tissues. In this study, phototoxicity of laser EIT 21 was analysed in human osteosarcoma cell(HOS) and the second objective of this study was to determine the ability of laser EIT 21 to induce apoptosis. This study demonstrated that laser EIT 21 had a phototoxicity to HOS cells. In order to examinate whether cell death was induced by necrosis or apoptosis, variety of techniques which assess apoptosis were used. TUNEL assay showed only a few the positive reaction on condensed nuclei. It is hard to find condensed or fragmented nuclei on HOS cells irradiated with laser EIT 21 in Hemastat and AO/EB stain. By DNA electrophoresis, cells also did not show DNA degradation characteristic of apoptosis with a ladder pattern of DNA fragments. Apoptosis-related factors were analyzed by western blotting. The expression of p53 was constant and cells irradiated with laser did not show the caspase-3 and PARP degradation, therefore we suggest that p53 and caspase-3 are not involved in laserinduced cell death.