Rapid synthesis of bovine serum albumin-conjugated gold nanoparticles using pulsed laser ablation and their anticancer activity on hela cells

Nanoscience research aims to produce nanoparticles without adverse effects for medical applications. The pulsed laser ablation (PLA) technique was utilized in this study to synthesize gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) using bovine serum albumin (BSA) in simulated body fluid (SBF) at the fun-damental wavelength of the Nd: YAG laser (1064 nm). BSA acted as a stabilizer, reducing and cap-ping agent to produce spherically shaped AuNPs (diameter 3-10 nm). The successful synthesis of AuNPs was confirmed through color changes and UV-vis spectroscopy. The agglomeration and precipitation of AuNPs are attributed to the presence of BSA in the solution, and electrostatic repulsion interactions between BSA and Au nanoclusters. The effect of salt concentration of SBF on BSA stability as well as the interaction of BSA conjugated AuNPs to form complexes was studied using molecular dynamic simulations. Our results show that the stability of AuNPs-BSA conjugates increase with the salt concentration of BSA. Moreover, the synthesized AuNPs exhibit low toxicity and high biocompatibility, supporting their application in drug delivery. Inves-tigation of the cytotoxic effect of the synthesized AuNPs show that normal fibroblast cells (L929) remain intact after treatment whereas a dose-dependent inhibition effect on the growth of cervix cancer cells (HeLa) is observed. In general, this study presents an effective, environmentally -friendly, and facile approach to the synthesis of multifunctional AuNPs using the PLA technique, as a promising efficacious therapeutic treatment of cervical cancer.(c) 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of King Saud University. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Automated summary

This study successfully synthesized gold nanoparticles using pulsed laser ablation technique and explored the effects of bovine serum albumin on particle stability and aggregation. The synthesized nanoparticles showed low toxicity and high biocompatibility, making them promising for therapeutic applications.