Biosynthesis of bimetallic and core–shell nanoparticles: their biomedical applications – a review

Abstract

Recently, researchers succeeded in designing and manufacturing a new class of nanoparticles (NPs) called hybrid NPs. Among hybrid NPs, bimetallic and core-shell NPs were a revolutionary step in NPs science. A large number of green physiochemical and methods for nanostructures synthesis have been published. Eventually, physiochemical methods are either expensive or require the use of chemical compounds for the synthesis of bimetallic and core-shell nanostructures. The main challenges that scientists are facing are making the process cheaper, facile and eco-friendly efficient synthesis process. Green synthesis (biosynthesis) refers to the use of bio-resources (such as bacteria, fungi, plants or their derivatives) for the synthesis of nanostructures. The popularity of the green synthesis of nanostructures is due to their environmental friendliness and no usage of toxic materials, environmental friendliness for the synthesis or stability of nanostructure. Bimetallic and core-shell NPs have many biomedical applications such as removing heavy metals, parasitology, molecular and microbial sensor, gene carrier, single bacterial detection, oligonucleotide detection and so on. The purpose of this study is to discuss briefly the biosynthesised bimetallic and core-shell NPs, their biomedical applications.

Metallic Nanoparticles Obtained via “Green” Synthesis as a Platform for Biosensor Construction

“…Metallic NPs consisting of one metal, metal oxides or a composite of several metals play a significant role in nanotechnology due to their potential utilization in industry and medicine [3][4][5][6][7]. NPs of noble metals possess low cytotoxicity, enable easy modification of their surfaces, have straightforward synthesis processes and excellent biocompatibility [8][9][10]. Such advantages make metallic NPs obtained by green synthesis (gNPs) prospective for applications in biological analysis, drug delivery and imaging, environmental monitoring, industrial catalysis and electronic devices [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19].…”

“…Many plants [11,12,21,[24][25][26], algae [4], microorganisms [1,3,[7][8][9][10]14,18,23,[27][28][29][30], as well as redox-imbalanced mammalian cells and systems [31] are known to produce nanostructured mineral crystals and metallic NPs with properties similar to chemically-synthesized materials. Biological agents, including polysaccharides, polypeptides, DNA, enzymes secreted by cells [24,[32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41] and purified enzymes [42,43] are able to reduce noble metal ions to gain metallic NPs.…”

Biological relevance of CuFeO2 nanoparticles: Antibacterial and anti-inflammatory activity, genotoxicity, DNA and protein interactions

“…Apart from nanosize effects, bioaffinity and redox dynamics/oxidation states govern the behavior of these materials in bioapplications by affecting the equilibrium of oxidative stress, reactive oxygen species production, antioxidant activity, DNA and protein interactions, biodamage and toxicity. Recently, bimetallic and heterostructured nanomaterials are investigated in the path of optimizing various properties [5,6,7,8,9,10,11]. When bioessential metals participate in the structures multifarious behavior is considered and concerns for risk assessment and toxicity are complicated.…”

Photo-Fenton like Catalyst System: Activated Carbon/CoFe2O4 Nanocomposite for Reactive Dye Removal from Textile Wastewater

“…Environmental pollution generated by industrial wastewater is one of the greatest problems the world is facing today and dyes are widely applied in many industries, such as leather, textile, plastics, paper, and other entities emanating from pharmaceutical and food industries [1][2][3][4][5]. Dyes effect the photosynthetic activities of aquatic lives and their ensuing byproducts are not biodegradable but are stable, carcinogenic, and hazardous to human health [6][7][8].…”