Myco-engineered gold nanoparticles from Jahnula aquatica coated with ampicillin/amoxicillin and their antibacterial and anticancer activity against cancer cells.

Antibiotics play an important role in medical treatments. However, the multidrug resistance (MDR) bacteria impairs their functionality. Therefore, drug delivery represents the solution for this problem. Many techniques and methods are used in drug delivery, however nanoparticles conjugated drug is one of the most effective and promising techniques. The current work investigates a one-step method of extracellular biosynthesis of gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) and their biocompatibility in antibiotic delivery, where the synthesized AuNPs were loaded with Ampicillin/Amoxicillin.

Both ampicillin and amoxicillin antibiotics are successfully conjugated with the Au NPs surface (the potential efficiency), especially, at the smaller particle size. Where, the Au NPs with particle size of 8 m size reveals a promising activity against cancer cells with 48 µg/mL inhibitory concentration (IC₅₀) after 24 h of their exposure to HeLa cells, and induction of apoptosis was also noticed on HeLa treated cells.

The bio-synthesised Au NPs using Jahnula. aquatica fungi show a promising nanocarrier biocompatibility drug delivery system in cancer clinical treatments, in particular for antibiotics delivery antibiotics in pharmaceutical applications with large-scale commercial production. To the best of our knowledge, freshwater fungi have never been exploited for AuNPs synthesis.