Green Synthesis of Highly Fluorescent Carbon Dots from Bovine Serum Albumin for Linezolid Drug Delivery as Potential Wound Healing Biomaterial: Bio-Synergistic Approach, Antibacterial Activity, and In Vitro and Ex Vivo Evaluation

Dina Saeed Ghataty; Reham Ibrahim Amer; Mai A Amer; Mohamed F Abdel Rahman; Rehab Nabil Shamma

doi:10.3390/pharmaceutics15010234

Green Synthesis of Highly Fluorescent Carbon Dots from Bovine Serum Albumin for Linezolid Drug Delivery as Potential Wound Healing Biomaterial: Bio-Synergistic Approach, Antibacterial Activity, and In Vitro and Ex Vivo Evaluation

Pharmaceutics. 2023 Jan 10;15(1):234. doi: 10.3390/pharmaceutics15010234.

Authors

Dina Saeed Ghataty¹, Reham Ibrahim Amer², Mai A Amer³, Mohamed F Abdel Rahman⁴, Rehab Nabil Shamma⁵

Affiliations

¹ Department of Pharmaceutics, Faculty of Pharmacy, October University for Modern Sciences and Arts (MSA), Giza 12451, Egypt.
² Department of Pharmaceutics and Pharmaceutical Technology, Faculty of Pharmacy, Al-Azhar University, Cairo 11754, Egypt.
³ Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Faculty of Pharmacy, October University for Modern Sciences and Arts (MSA), Giza 12451, Egypt.
⁴ Department of Biology and Biochemistry, School of Life and Medical Sciences, University of Hertfordshire Hosted by Global Academic Foundation, Cairo 4813001, Egypt.
⁵ Department of Pharmaceutics and Industrial Pharmacy, Faculty of Pharmacy, Cairo University, Cairo 11562, Egypt.

Abstract

A simple and green approach was developed to produce novel highly fluorescent bovine serum albumin carbon dots (BCDs) via facile one-step hydrothermal treatment, using bovine serum albumin as a precursor carbon source. Inherent blue photoluminescence of the synthesized BCDs provided a maximum photostability of 90.5 ± 1.2% and was characterized via TEM, FT-IR, XPS, XRD, UV-visible, and zeta potential analyses. By virtue of their extremely small size, intrinsic optical and photoluminescence properties, superior photostability, and useful non-covalent interactions with the synthetic oxazolidinone antibiotic linezolid (LNZ), BCDs were investigated as fluorescent nano-biocarriers for LNZ drug delivery. The release profile of LNZ from the drug delivery system (LNZ-BCDs) revealed a distinct biphasic release, which is beneficial for mollifying the lethal incidents associated with wound infection. The effective wound healing performance of the developed LNZ-BCDs were evaluated through various in vitro and ex vivo assays such as MTT, ex vivo hemolysis, in vitro antibacterial activity, in vitro skin-related enzyme inhibition, and scratch wound healing assays. The examination of LNZ-BCDs as an efficient wound healing biomaterial illustrated excellent biocompatibility and low cytotoxicity against normal human skin fibroblast (HSF) cell line, indicating distinct antibacterial activity against the most common wound infectious pathogens including Staphylococcus aureus (ATCC^® 25922) and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, robust anti-elastase, anti-collagenase, and anti-tyrosinase activities, and enhanced cell proliferation and migration effect. The obtained results confirmed the feasibility of using the newly designed fluorescent LNZ-BCDs nano-bioconjugate as a unique antibacterial biomaterial for effective wound healing and tissue regeneration. Besides, the greenly synthesized BCDs could be considered as a great potential substitute for toxic nanoparticles in biomedical applications due to their biocompatibility and intense fluorescence characteristics and in pharmaceutical industries as promising drug delivery nano-biocarriers for effective wound healing applications.

Keywords: antibacterial; bovine serum albumin; carbon dots; hydrothermal treatment; linezolid delivery; wound healing.

Grants and funding

This research received no external funding.