Alfalfa (Medicago sativa) Leaves Mediated Synthesis of Silver Nanoparticles and Assessment of Their Cytotoxic Effects on Various Cancer Cell Lines

Nanotechnology is one of the most popular sciences in recent years due to its usage in many fields. Herein, synthesis of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) was accomplished using alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) and their structures were established by spectroscopy. The surface plasmon resonance appeared at 449 nm in UV-Vis spectroscopy. The compound moieties acting as reducing agent was determined by FTIR. The XRD analysis showed the signals (2θ) at 38.1°, 46.3°, 65.0°, 77.4° and indexed to [111, 020, 202, 131] facets respectively indicating the structure as face-centered cubic. Scherrer equation with PANanalytical X’Pert-High Score software revealed the particle size to be 18 nm. The morphology of AgNPs was established by TEM and particle dimension was determined as 16 nm. The cytotoxicity of extract and AgNPs were performed using the Capan-1, MCF-7, DLD-1, H1299, and L929. Treatment of the extract and AgNPs with Capan-1 cell lines at 0.125 μg/mL resulted in cell viability of 11.5 and 10.6%. In addition, the viability of MCF-7 cells was observed as 63.2 and 58.5% at 1.0 μg/mL respectively after the treatment of extract and AgNPs. The best activity of extract and AgNPs was observed at 1.0 μg/mL on DLD-1 cell lines with percent viability of 24.4 and 31.6. The moderate activity of extract and AgNPs was observed on H-1299 cells. The high cytotoxicity was not detected by AgNPs on normal L929 cell lines which is a desirable situation.