Abstract

Cancer remains as one of the deadliest disease, causing large number of deaths worldwide. The expanding use of cancer immunotherapy has revealed that the survival patients suffer from various serious side effects due to the use of available anti-neoplastic medicines. The development of nanoparticle-based drugs seems to be effective providing low side effects and targeted action on cancer cells. The metal nanoparticles pose some side effects due to their toxicity whereas the Non-metallic Carbon dots (C-dots) are non –toxic and their applications in the field of medicine are less known. In the present study C-dots were synthesized by a simple single step wet chemical method from three different compounds namely Glucose (GCD), Sucrose (SCD) and Fructose (FCD) and characterized with UV-Visible and fluorescence spectroscopic techniques. The C-Dots were screened for the cytotoxicity against two cancer cell lines human Liver carcinoma cells (HepG2) and human breast carcinoma cells (MCF -7) by the MTT assay. The IC50 of the C-dot nanoparticles (SCD, GCD, FCD) on HepG2 cells were 67.24, <50 and and<50 μg/ml respectively and on MCF-7 cells were 105, <50 and <50 μg/ml respectively. The study reveals that the C-dots possess cytotoxic activity against the cancer cell lines and can be further used for the anticancer drug discovery.

Keywords: C-dot nanoparticles (SCD, GCD, FCD); IC50; Cytotoxicity