Carbon dots- A study of its cytotoxic activity against HepG2 and MCF-7 cell lines

Abstract

Advances in anticancer drug discovery are focusing on the invention of drugs that specifically prompt cell death and pose lesser toxicity to the customary cells. The proposal aims at evaluating the cytotoxic potential of the non-metallic carbon dot (CDs) nanoparticles as a selective anticancer drug against targeted human carcinoma cell lines of liver (HepG2) and breast (MCF-7) in vitro. CDs were synthesized by a chemogenic method from three different natural carbohydrate derivatives glucose (GCD), sucrose (SCD), and fructose (FCD) and were characterized by UV–Visible, Fluorescence, HRTEM, ATR-IR and Raman spectroscopic techniques. Further compared for their anticancer activity against above mentioned cells. The percent cell viability investigations showed a suitability of CDs for cytotoxic studies. The IC50 of the CDs nanoparticles (SCD, GCD, FCD) on HepG2 cells were <50 µl/ml respectively and on MCF-7 cells were <50 µl/ml respectively. Present investigation evident that CDs possess the cytotoxic potential and can be further used for anticancer drug discovery.