Yeast-mediated nanoparticles and their biomedical applications

Today nanotechnology is widely spread and plays an important role in many fields, especially the medical field. Nanoparticles (NPs) have unique physicochemical properties giving them additional activities which encourage their use in many applications. Nanoparticles can be synthesized through three main methods: chemical, physical, and biological. The best method is biological synthesis that is considered green, sustainable, eco-friendly, and economic. It depends on living organisms or their extracts including plants, bacteria, algae, fungi, and yeasts instead of toxic chemicals. Yeasts are promising microorganisms that recently attract the attention of many researchers to discover their potential in biosynthesis of nanoparticles that can be applied in different fields. Many research studies proved the ability of various yeast species to synthesize various metal and metal oxide nanoparticles whether intracellularly or extracellularly. Such nanoparticles include silver, gold, selenium, selenium sulfide, zinc sulfide, palladium, manganese dioxide, and titanium dioxide nanoparticles. Yeast-mediated nanoparticles have biomedical activities such as anticancer, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and antimicrobial. Studies revealed that yeast-synthesized nanoparticles have safe and nontoxic properties. Compared to research on NPs biosynthesis using bacteria and fungi, there are fewer research that focused on using yeast in NPs biosynthesis which makes it a promising area for more scientific discoveries in biosynthesis and applications of NPs. This review outlines previous studies involving biosynthesis and biomedical applications of yeast-mediated nanoparticles.