Abstract
Nanotherapeutic agents (NTA) play a crucial role in clinical medicine, if their unique properties are well understood and well exploited. In this direction, we report synthesis and characterization of highly potent phytofabricated silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) using Sechium edule, which served the purpose of both reducing and capping agent. The designed AgNPs were characterized using UV-Vis spectroscopy, XRD, FTIR, HR-TEM, and TGA techniques. The formation of AgNPs was also confirmed using electrochemistry, which to the best of our knowledge has never been reported before for biosynthesized nanoparticles. The antileishmanial potential of AgNPs was examined on the clinical isolates of Leishmania donovani promastigote cells in an in vitro experimental setting. A dose dependent killing activity of the AgNP was observed with an IC50 value of 51.88 ± 3.51 µg/ml. These results were also compared using commercially available drug, miltefosine. Furthermore, the clinical applicability of AgNP, as antileishmanial agent was proven by testing them against normal mammalian monocyte cell line (U937). The results were statistically analyzed and no significant toxicity of AgNPs on the normal mammalian cells was observed.
Highlights
Leishmaniasis, an emerging disease caused by parasitic protozoan of genus Leishmania is amongst one of the most neglected diseases across the globe
The efficacy of the AgNPs was compared using commercially available drug, miltefosine and their clinical potential were examined by testing them against normal mammalian monocyte cell line (U937)
In the second control experiment, AgNO3 without addition of S. edule extract was tested under similar experimental conditions and interestingly again no absorbance was evident at 435 nm (Figure 2A(i(c)))
Summary
A linear plot for AgNPs oxidation with scan rates was obtained having the regression equation as follows: Ipa = 2.996 (±0.253) + 0.005 (±0.006) [scan rate], with a correlation coefficient of 0.978 (n = 5), indicating high stability of the synthesized nanoparticles This was confirmed by performing a negative control experiment, where bare GCE was scanned under the similar potential window under similar experimental conditions. It is evident from the bioimaging results that the number of dead cells (red circle) after AgNPs treatment (Figure 6(v)) at its IC50 value are close to the negative control (Figure 6(iv)), in case of positive control (Figure 6(vi)) the dead cells are relatively higher in number This observation is in well agreement with the data shown, indicating the accuracy of our method. Deionized water from Milipore unit (Elix, USA) at 18.2 MΩ was used to prepare all the reagents and solutions
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