Biogenic Synthesized Bare and Boron-Doped Copper Oxide Nanoparticles from Thymbra spicat ssp. spicata: In Silico and In Vitro Studies

Abstract

The biosynthesis technique and biogenic copper oxide nanoparticles (CuONPs) are commonly used in a variety of applications including medicine. Bare (CuONPs) and boron-doped copper oxide nanoparticles (B/CuONPs) were produced via the green synthesis method using Thymbra spicat ssp. spicata due to their nontoxic, coast effective and facile properties. The nanoparticles were characterized by using X-ray diffraction, fourier transform infrared, UV-visible spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy, and Scanning electron microscopy with Energy Dispersive X-ray spectroscopy analysis. The produced nanoparticles performed antibacterial activity against human pathogenic organisms of both Gram-negative (E. coli) and Gram-positive (S. aureus) bacteria by using the microdilution technique. B/CuONPs showed high activity on Gram-positive bacteria, while CuONPs showed high activity on Gram-negative bacteria. The cytotoxic effect synthesized CuONPs and B/CuONPs were evaluated against human hepatocarcinoma (HepG2) cells by using MTT, Annexin-V, Caspase-3/7, and confocal microscopic evaluations. Moreover, the in-silico results have shown for the first time that the active role in the Caspase-3/7 step of the triggered apoptosis pathway is due to the activity of Caspase-7. The results indicated that the biogenic CuONPs and B/CuONPs exerted potential anti-cancer and anti-bacterial activity on HepG2 and S. aureus and E. coli that imply to remarkable biological activity. The green synthesized nanoparticles have clearly proposed promising biogenic nanomaterials for biomedical treatments.