MCF-7 human breast cancer cells after exposure to fractionated ionizing radiation

MCF-7 Human Breast Cancer Cells after Exposure to Fractionated Ionizing Radiation Breast cancer – the most common oncological disease among women. Radiotherapy is the main method of treatment used against breast cancer which induces DNA damage in cancer cells. Over the past few years, the study shown that some treatments are becoming less effective. For example cancer cells after the treatment with ionizing radiation become resistant. Such cells are called cancer stem cells and their resistance to ionizing radiation is the main obstacle finding effective treatment. The main purpose of this work was to identify changes in tumor cell morphology, determinate growth rate and viability of MCF-7 cells and to estimate CD44, CD24 molecular markers expression after the treatment with ionizing radiation. In this rsearch it was determined that the shape of irradiated cells changed after the treatment with ionizing radiation. Moreover it was found that MCF-7 cells growth rate decreased after the tretment with ionizing radiation. Further it was determined that immediately after the treatment with ionizing radiation, viability of irradiated cells decreased but recovered over the time, while viability of control cells were stable during all experiments. We estimated that CD44 molecular marker expression in control and irradiated cells were higher in irradiated cells than control cells. CD24 molecular marker expression was stable in the limits of errors. Finally it was found that quantum dots were accumulated by irradiated and control cells. All over the world researchers conduct studies trying to understand the impact of resistance mechanisms in cancer stem cells which could help to improve cancer treatments and enrich cancer patients survival rate and quality of life