Synthesis, Characterization of Silver and Gold Nanoparticles from Coffea arabica Extract and Their Cytotoxic Potential Against Cancer Cells

Abstract

Silver and gold nanoparticles have been getting great medical interest due to their potential physiochemical properties like higher surface to volume ratio and low molecular weight. In this study biogenic synthesis of silver and gold nanoparticles were successfully carried out using Coffea arabica extract. The aqueous extract of coffee was mixed with silver nitrate (1 mM) and chloroauric acid (10 -3 M) ensuing formation of silver and gold nanoparticles. UV-visible spectroscopy shows absorption maxima at 428 nm for silver and 540 nm for gold nanoparticles. Further characterization techniques used were FTIR, EDX and HRTEM with SAED. The HRTEM analysis reveals spherical nature of silver nanoparticles and polymorphic nature of gold nanoparticles with mean particle size 16 nm for silver and 12 nm for gold nanoparticles. The cytotoxic potentials of these nanoparticles were studied against HeLa, HCT116, MCF-7, THP-1 and K562 cell lines using MTT assay for studying cellular response of these nanoparticles. The synthesized silver nanoparticles were cytotoxic to all cell lines under study with mean cytotoxicity of 90% with IC50 18.36 μg/mL and CC50 of 7.9 μg/mL. The gold nanoparticles have shown CC50 of 69.97 μg/mL for the cell lines under study.