Oral
squamous cell cancer (OSCC) is the most common type of
oral cancer (about 80-90% of cases) and various research is being done to cure the disease. This paper aims to verify whether treatment with no-
ozone cold plasma (NCP), which is designed for safe usage of the plasma on oral cavities, in combination with
gold nanoparticles conjugated with p-FAK antibody (p-FAK/GNP) can trigger the selective and instant killing of SCC-25 cells both in vitro and in vivo. When SCC25 and HaCaT cells are exposed to p-FAK/GNP+NCP, the instant cell death was observed only in SCC25 cells. Such p-FAK/GNP+NCP-mediated cell death was observed only when NCP was directly treated on SCC25 harboring p-FAK/GNP. During NCP treatment, the removal of charged particles from NCP using grounded electric mesh radically decreased the p-FAK/GNP+NCP-mediated cell death. This p-FAK/GNP+NCP-mediated selective cell death of OSCC was also observed in mice xenograft models using SCC25 cells. The mere treatment of p-FAK/GNP and NCP on the xenograft
tumor slowly decreased the size of the
tumor, and only about 50% of the
tumor remained at the end of the experiment. On the other hand, 1 week of p-FAK/GNP+NCP treatment was enough to reduce half of the
tumor size, and most of
tumor tissue had vanished at the end. An analysis of isolated tissues showed that in the case of individual treatment with p-FAK/GNP or NCP, the
cancer cell population was reduced due to apoptotic cell death. However, in the case of p-FAK/GNP+NCP, apoptotic cell death was unobserved, and most tissues were composed of
collagen. Thus, this paper suggests the possibility of p-FAK/GNP+NCP as a new method for treating OSCC.