Anti-angiogenic vanadium pentoxide nanoparticles for the treatment of melanoma and their in vivo toxicity study

In recent days, vanadium complexes and nanoparticles have received sustainable attention owing to their vast applications in different fields. In the present study, we report a facile approach for the synthesis of irregular dumbbell shaped vanadium pentoxide nanoparticles (V2O5 NPs: 30-60 nm) via the polyol-induced microwave irradiation process along with calcination. The as-synthesized nanoparticles were characterized using various physico-chemical techniques (e.g. XRD, TEM, FT-IR, DLS and XPS). The cell viability assay showed that V2O5 NPs could efficiently inhibit the proliferation of different cancer cells (B16F10, A549, and PANC1), depicting their anti-proliferative activity. However, V2O5 NPs did not exert significant cytotoxicity to the normal cells (CHO, HEK-293 and NRK-49F), suggesting their biocompatible nature. Interestingly, these nanoparticles inhibited the proliferation and migration of the endothelial cells (HUVECs and EA.hy926) and disrupted the blood vasculature in a chick embryo model, indicating their anti-angiogenic properties. The mechanistic study revealed that the effective internalization of V2O5 NPs generated intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS) which in turn up-regulated p53 protein and down-regulated survivin protein in cancer cells, leading to the apoptosis process. Furthermore, the administration of V2O5 NPs to melanoma bearing C57BL6/J mice significantly increased their survivability as compared to the control untreated tumor bearing mice, exhibiting the therapeutic potential of the nanoparticles against melanoma. Additionally, the in vivo toxicity study demonstrated no toxic effect in mice upon sub-chronic exposure to V2O5 NPs. Altogether, we strongly believe that V2O5 NPs could intrinsically provide a new direction for alternative therapeutic treatment strategies for melanoma and other cancers by employing their anti-angiogenic properties in the future.