Graphene oxide (GO) is one of the most promising functional materials used in various applications like energy storage (batteries and supercapacitors) sensors, photocatalysis, electronics and in biomedicine. The last 10 years literature on GO for biomedical applications revealed and confirmed the scope of its potential capabilities as biomaterial. GO alone and its modified form with different materials (surface functionalization, immobilization of nanoparticles and composite formation) also proved as a multifunctional candidate for medical biotechnology. A material for its use in biomedical applications must be biocompatible and nontoxic to the living cells.. Although there are some concerns about the toxicity of the GO in specific cases, a dosage range and size effects reported in the literature to use it as a nontoxic materials. In view of all these points, an effort has been made to review and emphasize the scope of GO as a biomedical agent for the applications like targeted drug delivery, cancer theranostics, bioimaging and biosensors etc. Further, potential applications along with the future scope and limitations of GO have also been highlighted in this review.
In this work, a series of mesoporous carbon nanocapsules (mCNS) of size below 10 nm have been prepared from Azadirachta indica seeds with a very easy and cost-effective approach. These nanocapsules can emit red and green light and are effective for cell imaging. Further, these carbon nanocapsules are biocompatible toward the normal healthy cells, however, they possess modest cytotoxicity against the MCF-7 (human breast cancer) and triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) (MDA-MB-231 breast cancer cells), and the rate of killing cancer cells strongly depends on the dose of mCNCs. Further, the mitochondrial membrane potential and apoptosis assay were performed to analyze the therapeutic significance of these nanocapsules to kill breast cancer. Results showed that these carbon nanocapsules can depolarize the mitochondrial membrane potential alone (without using conventional drugs) and can change the physiological parameters and cellular metabolic energy of the cancer cells and kill them. The apoptosis results confirmed the death of breast cancer cells in the form of apoptosis and necrosis. Moreover, the results suggested that the porous carbon nanocapsules (mCNCs) reported herein can be used as a potential candidate and useful for the theranostic applications such as for cancer cell detection and therapy without using any conventional drugs.
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