Green synthesis of inorganic nanoparticles and their cancer theranostics applications

Abstract Since past few decades, nanotechnology revolutionizes the modern healthcare research, majorly focusing on the development of therapeutic and diagnostic (theranostics) treatment strategies for cancers. Considering the important roles of inorganic metal ions in diverse physiological processes, researchers had previously designed a variety of inorganic nanoparticles (NPs) using different chemical routes for various biomedical applications, including cancer theranostics. However, in later stage scientists showed a prime concern regarding medicinal use of these nanomaterials due to their adverse toxicity and biosafety issues. To overcome these limitations, recently there is an upward trend for synthesizing different inorganic metal NPs employing several bio/green resources that include plant extract, fungus, and bacteria. Besides overcoming toxicity issues, the green synthesis approach for the fabrication of NPs possesses other advantages including simpler, easier, cost-effective, and faster route than the conventional chemical methods. Considering the growing burden of cancers worldwide, various research groups have recently synthesized different inorganic NPs leveraging green chemistry approach and demonstrated their therapeutic (anticancer activity and drug delivery) and diagnostic (bioimaging) applications for different cancer diseases. This chapter describes the recent progress of these green synthesized nanomaterials that exhibit efficient cancer theranostics applications. Further, taking into account the potential clinical applications, the in vivo toxicity studies of these NPs, associated diverse challenges, and future aspects are also concisely described.