Facile synthesis of ferromagnetic Ni doped CeO2 nanoparticles with enhanced anticancer activity

• Published in: Applied surface science 2015-12, Vol.357, p.931-936
• Main Authors: Abbas, Fazal, Jan, Tariq, Iqbal, Javed, Ahmad, Ishaq, Naqvi, M. Sajjad H., Malik, Maaza
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Anticancer properties; Biotechnology; Cancer; Differential cytotoxicity; Doping; Ferromagnetism; Nanoparticles; Nickel; NixCe1−xO2 nanoparticles; Raman spectroscopy; X-ray diffraction
• ISSN: 0169-4332; 1873-5584
• DOI: 10.1016/j.apsusc.2015.08.229

•The synthesized undoped and Ni doped CeO2 nanoparticles exhibited RTFM.•Oxygen vacancies and magnetic ions both were believed to be responsible for RTFM.•The prepared nanoparticles exhibited selective cytotoxicity.•Ni doping enhanced the anticancer activity of CeO2 nanoparticles.•Differential ROS generation was observed to control their cytotoxicity. NixCe1−xO2 (where x=0, 0.01, 0.03, 0.05 and 0.07) nanoparticles were synthesized by soft chemical method and were characterized using X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Raman, UV–vis absorption spectroscopy and vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM). XRD and Raman results indicated the formation of single phase cubic fluorite structure for the synthesized nanoparticles. Ni dopant induced excessive structural changes such as decrease in crystallite size as well as lattice constants and enhancement in oxygen vacancies in CeO2 crystal structure. These structural variations significantly influenced the optical and magnetic properties of CeO2 nanoparticles. The synthesized NixCe1−xO2 nanoparticles exhibited room temperature ferromagnetic behavior. Ni doping induced effects on the cytotoxicity of CeO2 nanoparticles were examined against HEK-293 healthy cell line and SH-SY5Y neuroblastoma cancer cell line. The prepared NixCe1−xO2 nanoparticles demonstrated differential cytotoxicity. Furthermore, anticancer activity of CeO2 nanoparticles observed to be significantly enhanced with Ni doping which was found to be strongly correlated with the level of reactive oxygen species (ROS) production. The prepared ferromagnetic NixCe1−xO2 nanoparticles with differential cytotoxic nature may be potential for future targeted cancer therapy.