Natural polysaccharide derived carbon dot based in situ facile green synthesis of silver nanoparticles: Synergistic effect on breast cancer.

Over the decades, several nanoparticles have been developed for biomedical applications, still facile green synthesis derived nanoparticles showed tremendous attraction due to avoid of toxic solvent, ease of synthesis and low cost. Here, facile one pot in situ green synthesis is reported to develop silver nanoparticles with the aid of natural polysaccharide presented in sweet lemon peel waste derived carbon dot (CD) acted as a reducing and stabilizing agent at room temperature. The synthesis of CD and CD based silver nanoparticles (CD@AgNPs) was characterized by FTIR, UV-vis spectroscopy, fluorescence spectrophotometer, XRD and TEM. CD@AgNPs exhibited excellent antimicrobial activity against E. coli at very low concentration of 5.0 μg/ml. Interestingly, CD showed selective cytotoxicity against MCF7 breast cancer cells with the IC50 of 10 μg/ml while CD@AgNPs demonstrated synergistic effect on cytotoxicity. It is found that the cells death of MCF7 cells mainly occurred through the up-regulation of intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS). Therefore, the synthesized CD@AgNPs may show an efficient anticancer agent for targeted breast cancer therapy in future.