SYNTHESIS AND CHARACTERIZATION OF SILVER NANOPARTICLES USING PALESTINIAN THYMUS CAPITATUS, WITH EVALUATION OF ITS POTENTIAL ANTI-OXIDANT, ANTIMICROBIAL, AND ANTICANCER ACTIVITIES
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Date
2025-03-06
Authors
Asmar, Lara
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Publisher
An Najah National University
Abstract
Introduction: Nowadays, the demand for thyme oil is growing because of the wide variety of its applications. Thymus capitatus, or Thymbra capitat, belongs to the Lamiaceae family and was the main herbal plant in this research that aimed to study the potential synthesis of silver nanoparticles utilizing Thymus capitatus essential oil as a reducing and stabilizing agent and to assess its antioxidant, anticancer, antimicrobial, and anti-inflammatory properties for potential biomedical applications in medicine.
Methodology: The essential oil of T. capitatus was obtained through hydrodistillation. The chemical composition of the essential oil was identified and characterized using GC/MS spectrometry. The green synthesis of AgNPs was accomplished by dropwise adding diluted T. capitatus oil to a 0.1 M aqueous solution of AgNO3. Characterization of synthesized AgNPs was accomplished by several techniques, including UV-visible spectrometry, dynamic light scattering, atomic force microscopy, and zeta potential analyzer. An antimicrobial assay for both synthesized AgNPs was performed against six different types of the most common bacteria in addition to the fungi Candida albicans. Also, the cytotoxicity of synthesized AgNPs and T. capitatus EO was studied on many different cell types, including, Hep3B, B16F1, 3T3, MCF-7, HeLa, and HEK293 cell lines. The evaluation of antioxidant activity was conducted using a DPPH test. The effectiveness of the synthesized AgNPs and T. capitatus EO in reducing inflammation was assessed through the COX (human) inhibitor screening assay kit.
Results: The EO yield of extraction was 1.16 %W/W, the major chemical components of the EOs were carvacrol with the highest percentage (37.47%), P-cymene (27.96%), and γ-terpinene (26.3%). The green synthesis of T. capitatus AgNPs was accomplished after several trials to determine the optimal synthesis parameter. Finally, we had a dark-brown colloidal sample of AgNPs. The UV-visible spectral peak was obtained at 425 nm wavelength. The AFM image shows a mostly spherical shape of the synthesized AgNPs with a diameter range between 40 and 80 nm. In contrast, the average effective diameter obtained by DSL analysis was 119.80 ±1.7 nm, and the zeta potential value was -43.86 ±2.2. Both synthesized AgNPS and T. capitatus EO have good antioxidant activity compared to the reference Trolox. However, the potency of synthesized AgNPs was 5-fold greater than T. capitatus EO, with IC50 values of 2.27 ±0.91, 10.47 ±1.11, and 48.97 ±1.20μg/ml for Trolox, synthesized AgNPs, and T. capitatus oil, respectively.
The synthesized AgNPs had antimicrobial activity about 5-folds greater than T. capitatus pure oil against all bacterial strains that were used in addition to candida albicans, with MIC values ranging between (0.016 _ 0.290 μg/ml) for AgNPs, and (0.078 and 1.562 μg/ml) for pure T. capitatus EO. Both T. capitatus EO and synthesized AgNPs showed promising results against HeLa, MCF-7, NIH3T3, HEK293, Hep3B, and B16F1 cell lines. Synthesized AgNPs have an average percent inhibition of 80% at 200 μg/ml concentration. Finally, results indicate a great anti-inflammatory activity for synthesized AgNPs and the pure oil, also, both of them were more selective for COX-2 than COX-1, especially the synthesized NPs, whose IC50 value (2.83 µg/ml) toward COX-2 was almost 14% of the IC50 value (19.42 µg/ml) for the oil.
Conclusion: The green synthesis of AgNPs can be performed by using Palestinian T. capitatus EOs as a reducing agent. Furthermore, these AgNPs can be used to develop a new treatment line for cancer therapy due to their anticancer activities