Chemotherapy and radiation are unable to eliminate all
cancer cells, particularly apoptosis-resistant
cancer cells, despite their ability to kill
cancer cluster cells. Thus, it is important to identify methods that eliminate all
cancer cells in order to prevent relapse.
Salinomycin has the ability to control and eradicate different types of
cancer, including
breast cancer; however, its molecular mechanism remains unclear. The main difficulty in testing
salinomycin activity and understanding the governing mechanisms is its low solubility in water (17 mg/l), which can hinder convenient delivery of
salinomycin to the
protein receptor at the cell surface of stem cells. In the present study,
salinomycin was conjugated to the
trans-activator of transcription-
protein in order to facilitate its delivery to the
cancer cells. Conjugated
salinomycin demonstrated improved solubility in both in vitro.
Salinomycin was tested in
breast cancer cells (MCF7 and JIMT-1) by the cleavage of the linker through photolysis at l≥365 nm during in vitro analysis, in the present study.