Nanosilver reinforced Parmelia sulcata extract efficiently induces apoptosis and inhibits proliferative signalling in MCF-7 cells.

The Lichen, Parmelia sulcata synthesizes various secondary metabolites, in which phenolic based compounds received much attention due to their importance in biomedical application. Especially the phenolic compound was effective against the cancer treatment. An effective administration of such plant natural product can represent a significant conventional management of cancer in terms of chemoprevention. The nanomedicines are group of agents that selectively interfere the cancer cells which leads to reduction of side effect thereby reducing the doses. Silver nanoparticles is a promising antitumor agent, however, the conventional production of silver nanoparticles have many drawbacks which led to increase in need of eco-friendly biological production methods. In this study, we made an attempt to synthesise a nano silver (Ps-AgNPs) from phenolic extract of lichen Parmelia sulcata extract. The Ps-AgNps was applied for anticancer activity using MCF-7 cells and the effect was characterised by western blotting method. The FTIR, XRD, UV and TEM results confirms the presence of silver nanoparticles in phenolic extract of lichen Parmelia sulcata. The cytotoxicity assay shows that the Ps-AgNPs is toxic against cancer cells (MCF-7) but not to normal cells (NIH3T3), which confirm the selective induction of cell death (apoptosis) against cancer cells. The Western blot analysis also clearly indicates the down regulation of inflammatory genes (TNF-alpha and IL-6) and cell cycle genes (PCNA and Cyclin-D1) thus promoting intrinsic apoptotic pathway. The results suggest that Ps-AgNPs can effectively kill cancer cells and can be used as an alternative therapeutic agent for cancer treatment.