Effect of Biologically Synthesized Silver Nanoparticles on Human Cancer Cells

Nanotechnology as a field of knowledge is burgeoning day by day, making an impact in all spheres of human life. Biological methods of synthesis have paved way for the "greener synthesis" of nanoparticles. The "green synthesis" has proven to be a better method due to their slower kinetics, better manipulation, control over crystal growth and stabilization. Recent advancement in the field includes enzymatic method of synthesis suggesting the enzymes to be responsible for the nanoparticle formation. The biomedical applications of silver nanoparticle (AgNPs) can be effective by the use of biologically synthesized nanoparticles which minimize the factors like cost of synthesis and toxicity of product. These are further found to be exceptionally stable when compared with the nanoparticles prepared through other methods. In the present study, silver nanoparticles were biologically synthesized using pure enzyme alpha-amylase and the other one by using soluble proteins of neem leaf extracts. The nanoparticles were characterized by UV-Visible absorption, Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) and X-ray Diffraction (XRD). In addition to the normal cell line (INT-407), the cytotoxicity of the prepared nanoparticles was evaluated on human cervical cancer cells (Si Ha) as well. The results indicated that the IC50 of neem extracted AgNPs and alpha-amylase were at marginally variable concentrations that is; lower concentration of <= 4.25 mu g/ml for the former and <= 32.5 mu g/ml for the latter. In addition, our results also demonstrated that in vitro cytotoxicity assessment of the AgNPs has significant correlation with the total protein concentration in treated cells. These findings confirm the cytotoxic properties of AgNPs, and suggest that they may be cost-effective and an alternative measure in the field of cancer therapeutics.