Synthesis and characterization of gold nanoparticles from <i>Marsdenia tenacissima</i> and its anticancer activity of liver cancer HepG2 cells

Nowadays, the synthesis and characterization of gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) from plant based extracts and effects of their anticancer have concerned an important interest. <i>Marsdenia tenacissima</i> (MT), a conventional Chinese herbal medicine, has long been used for thousands of years to treat tracheitis, asthma, rheumatism, etc. In this present study, we optimize the reaction of parameters to manage the nanoparticle size, which was categorized by high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HR-TEM). A different characterization method, for example, UV-visible spectroscopy (UV-vis), fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) were performed to consider the synthesized AuNPs getting from the MT leaf extract. The MT-AuNPs were analyzed for their cytotoxicity property against HepG2 cells by MTT analysis. The apoptosis was evaluated by using reactive oxygen species (ROS), migration assay, mitochondrial membrane potential (MMP) and apoptotic protein expression. Interestingly, the findings of our study observed the cytotoxicity effect of synthesized MT-AuNPs at a concentration of 59.62 ± 4.37 μg after 24 hrs treatment. Apoptosis was induced by the MT-AuNPs with enhanced ROS, changed MMP and inhibit the migration assay. Finally, the apoptosis was confirmed by the considerable up-regulation of Bax, caspase-9 and caspase-3, while the anti-apoptotic protein expressions of Bcl-2 and Bcl-XL were down-regulated. Although, in this studies, we evaluated the characterization, synthesis and anticancer action of gold nanoparticles from MT (MT-AuNPS) helpful for liver cancer therapeutics.