Drug Delivery System for Controlled Cancer Therapy Using Physico-Chemically Stabilized Bioconjugated Gold Nanoparticles Synthesized from Marine Macroalgae, Padina Gymnospora

Abstract

Gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) have always been considered as superior tools for biosystem applications owing to their characteristic optical properties in form of surface plasmon resonance and amperometric properties with very low or no immediate toxicity. Biosystem application based tools have been designed based on many studies with gold nanoparticles but the reduction of bulk material to nanosized particle in conjugation with biomolecules in a physicochemical environment is an area requiring deeper investigation. In the present study complementary high resolution imaging techniques on different length scale are applied to elucidate morphology of gold nanoparticles. The biomolecules involved in conjugation and reduction were further characterized. The impact of macroalgae broth concentration on formation of AuNPs (8-21 nm) were further studied to determine the functional and molecular mechanism of cell death on Liver cancer (HepG2) cell line and Lung cancer (A549) cell line. We report AuNPs-induced death response in human carcinoma liver cell line HepG2 in contrast to lung cancer cell line which remained little affected. The induction specificity for death response in lung cells clarifies that AuNPs do not universally target all cell types. Altered DNA fragmentation and cell staining in different cancer cell suggests a potential for in vivo applications of gold nanomaterials and demands the need of the time for studies evaluating the interactions of nanomaterials with biomolecules and cellular components for controlled cancer therapy.