In-vitro antioxidant and cytotoxic activities of silver nanoparticles of embelin isolated from Embelia ribes

Embelin is a key constituent of Embelia ribes, has a wide range of pharmacological effects including antioxidant and anticancer. However, the potential of embelin as a chemotherapeutic agent is limited due to its hydrophobicity. The present study aimed to formulate water soluble nanoformulation of embelin AgNPs and evaluate its in vitro antioxidant and cytotoxic properties. The embelin AgNPs was prepared using silver nitrate solution and characterized by SEM and Zeta potential measurement. In-vitro antioxidant and cytotoxic studies were conducted for embelin and its synthesized AgNPs using DPPH and MTT assay method, respectively. The synthesized embelin AgNPs was hydrophilic in nature with particle size ranges from 19.06-22.64 nm. The charge of embelin AgNPs were confirmed by Zeta potential and found to be −34.9 mV. In the DPPH method embelin AgNPs showed 83.69 ± 5.03% of inhibition at 500 μg/ml and the activity was well comparable with embelin. In MTT assay, embelin AgNPs at 10 and 25 μg/ml exhibited significant reduction in cancerous cell growth when compared to embelin. This findings indicating that the embelin AgNPs was an efficient nanocarrrier for delivering embelin to cancer cells. In future, embelin AgNPs will be further tested in in-vivo models to confirm its safety and efficacy.