Facile one-step green synthesis of gold nanoparticles (AuNp) using licorice root extract: Antimicrobial and anticancer study against HepG2 cell line

Abstract

Nanostructures synthesis via green method has been popular due to agitating assets and ground-breaking applications. Cost-effective novel and environment friendly gold nanoparticles (AuNp) synthesized via licorice root extract. The conditions for the eco-friendly AuNp synthesis was optimized by 6 ml salt concentration and 4 ml extract with pH 5 after 2:30 h at 25 °C temperature. A more detailed characterization of green synthesized AuNp was performed using UV–Vis, Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) and X Ray diffraction (XRD) spectroscopy EDX analysis, transmission and scanning electron microscopy, DLS (dynamic light scattering) and High-performance liquid chromatography to identify the components within licorice root extract. With the aim of retrieving consistent capacity on antioxidant activity ABTS and DPPH two dissimilar broadly applied antioxidant methods were applied. The cytotoxicity of green synthesized AuNps was assessed applying an MTT method upon MCF-7 (breast cancer), HePG-2 (liver) cell-lines. The antifungal with antibacterial activity of green synthesized AuNp was examined by agar well diffusion technique. The as synthesized AuNp showed restrained antibacterial, antifungal activity towards bacterial and fungal strains used and importantly reflective anticancer activity was observed against used cell lines.

Keywords

• Licorice root
• Gold nanoparticles
• Sterol compounds
• Anticancer
• Antioxidant