Assisted sonodynamic damage of bovine serum albumin by metronidazole under ultrasonic irradiation combined with photosensitive antitumor drug-Amsacrine.

By research, it was found that the Amsacrine (AMSA) can interact with bovine serum albumin (BSA). In this work, the AMSA was adopted as a sonosensitizer and the Metronidazole (MET) was used as a sensitizer to further damage BSA molecules under ultrasonic irradiation. It could be concluded that the damage degree of BSA molecules in the presence of AMSA and MET was more serious than in the presence of pure AMSA. That is, MET could aggravate the damage to BSA molecules under ultrasonic irradiation combined with AMSA. Meanwhile, the damage degree of BSA molecules was also influenced by some factors, such as ultrasonic irradiation time, MET concentration and solution acidity. In addition, the damage site of BSA molecules was estimated by synchronous fluorescence spectra. It was found that the tyrosine (Tyr) and tryptophan (Typ) residues were damaged almost averagely. Perhaps, these research results are of great significance for driving sonodynamic method to treat tumor in clinic application. Copyright 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.