Novel green synthesis of Boswellia serrata leaf aqueous extract conjugated gold nanoparticles with excellent anti-acute myeloid leukemia property in comparison to mitoxantrone in a leukemic mice model: Introducing a new chemotherapeutic drug

Abstract

© 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. The present research confirms the capacity of aqueous extract of Boswellia serrata grown under in vitro condition for the green synthesis of gold nanoparticles (AuNPs). Also, we showed the cytotoxicity, antioxidant, and anti-acute myeloid leukemia properties of AuNPs compared to mitoxantrone in a leukemic mouse model. The synthesized AuNPs were characterized using several techniques including XRD, TEM, FE-SEM, UV–Vis, and FT-IR. From the XRD pattern, four distinct diffraction peaks at 38.2°, 44.2°, 64.7° and 77.4° are indexed as (111), (200), (220) and (311) planes of FCC metallic gold. TEM and FE-SEM images revealed an average diameters of 15–30 nm for the nanoparticles. FT-IR findings offered antioxidant compounds in the nanoparticles were the sources of reducing power, reducing gold ions to AuNPs. UV–Vis revealed an absorption band at 536 nm that is related to the surface plasmon resonance of AuNPs. In vivo design, induction of acute myeloid leukemia was done by DMBA in 75 mice. Then, the mice were randomly divided into six subgroups, including untreated, control, HAuCl4, B. serrata, AuNPs, and mitoxantrone. AuNPs (In the dose of 1 mg/kg body weight) similar to mitoxantrone, significantly (p ≤ 0.05) increased the platelet, lymphocyte, and RBC parameters and the anti-inflammatory cytokines (IL4, IL5, IL10, IL13, and IFNα) and reduced the weights and volumes of liver and spleen and their sub-compartment, the total WBC, blast, monocyte, neutrophil, eosinophil, and basophil counts, and the pro-inflammatory cytokines (IL1, IL6, IL12, IL18, IFNY, and TNFα) as compared to the untreated mice. By quantitative Real-Time PCR, S1PR1 and S1PR5 mRNA expression in lymphocytes were significantly (p ≤ 0.05) increased by treating the leukemic mice with the AuNPs and mitoxantrone. In vitro design, AuNPs similar to mitoxantrone had low cell viability dose-dependently against Human HL-60/vcr, 32D-FLT3-ITD, and Murine C1498 cell lines without any cytotoxicity on HUVEC cell line. Besides, the DPPH assay showed similar antioxidant potentials for AuNPs and mitoxantrone. In conclusion, the results of this research indicated the excellent capacity of synthesized gold nanoparticles using B. serrata leaf aqueous extract in the treatment of acute myeloid leukemia in leukemic mice.