Inhibitory Effect of Zinc Sulfide Nanoparticles Towards Breast Cancer Stem Cell Migration and Invasion

Cancer stem cells are demonstrated to be a highly malignant cancer with an extremely high migratory ability and conventional therapies have little effect on preventing cancer migration and invasion. In this study, we investigated the inhibitory effect of zinc sulfide (ZnS) nanoparticles towards the migration and invasion of breast cancer stem cells MCF-7-SC. The cytotoxicity studies and the Hoechst staining experiments suggested that there is no obvious toxicity of ZnS has been observed upto a concentration of 400 µg/mL. ZnS nanoparticles significantly inhibited the wound healing in the MCF-7-SC cells. The cell invasion assay and western blot analysis results suggested that ZnS nanoparticles inhibited the metastasis of MCF-7-SCs in dose-dependent manner by suppressing epithelial-mesenchymal transition process. Overall, our experimental analysis suggested that nano ZnS has the ability to inhibit cancer stem cell migration and invasion, which can open up new insights in the cancer therapy.