Green synthesis of nanometal impregnated biomass - antiviral potential

Due to the epidemic nature, Chikungunya virus (CHIKV), arthropod-borne alphaviruses, is considered as a potential public health threat worldwide. Currently, no antiviral drug or vaccine is available against alphaviruses. Nanotechnology with green synthesis of nanoparticles is a novel and emerging interdisciplinary field of science that involves the production and usage of nanomaterials. Nano-biomaterials are clean, safe, non-toxic, cost effective and environment friendly which have been largely exploited to develop novel antiviral drugs in recent years. In the current work, different nanometals (Ag, Fe and Zn) were impregnated into raw Citrus limetta peels. The characterization of synthesized biomaterials was done using XRD and XPS which confirmed the presence of metallic forms of Fe and Ag whereas ZnO was formed during the impregnation process. Based on TEM analysis, the average size of nanoparticles was found to be 5, 32 and 12 nm for Ag, Fe and ZnO respectively. For evaluation of antiviral activity, nano-biomaterials AgNps, FeNps and ZnONps were processed for cell culture based experiments. All the three nano-biomaterials significantly reduced CHIKV viral titer and viral RNA level as determined by plaque assay, real time PCR and immunofluorescence assay. The results revealed that silver and iron nano-biomaterials have higher antiviral potential in comparison to zinc against CHIKV. In conclusion, green synthesized nano-biomaterials can act as good antiviral agents. These nano-biomaterials can further be processed for formulation of effective and promising nanomedicines against CHIKV and other similar viruses which are a threat to human health.