Silver Nanoparticles Biosynthesized Using Achillea biebersteinii Flower Extract: Apoptosis Induction in MCF-7 Cells via Caspase Activation and Regulation of Bax and Bcl-2 Gene Expression
In this clinical study, published in February 2015 in the journal Molecules, researchers treated a human breast cancer cell line with silver nanoparticles that were synthesized using flowers from the Yarrow herb (Achillea biebersteinii).
The researchers acknowledged previous research demonstrating that silver nanoparticles have been demonstrated to be toxic against cancer cell lines, and concluded that their “green”-synthesized silver nanoparticles worked equally as well, stating, “The cells were exposed to various concentrations of Ag-NPs for 24 h and 48 h then the toxicity effects of Ag-NPs assessed using the MTT assay. The MTT results showed that the Ag-NPs decreased cell viability on a dose and time-dependent basis. The inhibitory concentration (IC50 value) was 20 µg/mL after 24 h of cell treatment. It is similar to IC50 that reporting with other researchers.” In other words, similar to the results of other clinical studies, the 20 ppm concentration of silver nanoparticles used by the researchers killed half of the cancer cells after just 24 hours of treatment
The researchers concluded, “In summary, our data indicated that the biosynthesized silver nanoparticles induced apoptosis on MCF-7 cell line… Biosynthesized silver nanoparticles from Achillea biebersteinii flower extract could be considered a potential chemotherapeutic agent in the treatment of breast cancer.”
