Cytotoxicity and antibacterial assessment of gallic acid capped gold nanoparticles

Cytotoxicity of nanoparticles needs to be examined for their biocompatibility and suitability in biomedical applications. Gallic acid method was used for the high concentration synthesis (1 mM) of gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) having narrow size-distribution at ambient temperature (25 °C). Gallic acid capped AuNPs were characterized by different techniques such as, UV–vis spectroscopy, TEM, EDAX, SAED, and XPS. In-vitro stability of AuNPs with biomolecules, such as glucose and bovine serum albumin (BSA) was explored at different concertation ranges. The result reveals that AuNPs are biocompatible with normal cell line mouse embryonic fibroblast (MEF) cells up to 100 ppm and cell viability can be retained more than 50% even after increasing the dose from 200 to 400 ppm. Antibacterial application of AuNPs revealed that both particles and surface chemistry seems to be safer for both gram positive and gram negative bacterial cultures.