Cullen corylifolium (L.) Medik. Seed Extract, an Excellent System For Fabrication of Silver Nanoparticles and Their Multipotency Validation Against Different Mosquito Vectors and Human Cervical Cancer Cell Line

Abstract

Development of therapeutic drugs for mosquito control and cancer is the need of the hour. This study highlights the fabrication of silver nanoparticles by incubating 45 ml of AgNO3 (0.5 mM) solution with 5 ml of Cullen corylifolium aqueous green seed extract at 60 ± 2 °C, 9 pH for 90 min. Ultraviolet–visible spectroscopy confirmed the synthesis of AgNPs by observing the absorption peak at 422 nm. Crystallographic nature of AgNPs was proved by XRD spectrum. FE-SEM images exhibited that most of AgNPs were spherical in shape with 20–60 nm average size. FT-IR spectrum revealed the existence of secondary metabolites that were involved in the reduction, stabilization and capping of AgNPs. The synthesized AgNPs exhibited the strong bioefficacy against the 3rd instar larvae of Anopheles stephensi (LC50, 6.03; LC90, 10.86 ppm), Aedes aegypti (LC50, 8.29; LC90, 13.75 ppm) and Culex quinquefasciatus (LC50, 16.55; LC90, 36.81 ppm) after 72 h of exposure. The AgNPs also exhibited strong anti-cancer activity having IC50 value 1.129 μg/ml after 24 h. These were proved to be non-toxic against non-target organism and normal cell line. These results suggest that synthesized AgNPs have strong larvicidal and anti-cancer potential and thus can be employed in cancer therapy, targeted drug delivery and drug designing.