Biosynthesis of gold nanoparticles, characterization and their loading with zonisamide as a novel drug delivery system for the treatment of acute spinal cord injury.

In the present work, a facile biosynthetic approach for the synthesis of AuNPs using bark extract of Juglans regia (J. regia) is reported. Ultra-violet visible (UV-vis) absorption spectroscopic studies exhibited and narrow SPR absorption band at 540 nm, represented the isotropy in particle size. The transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis, confirmed the fabrication of spherical and crystalline nanoparticles of average size of about 14 nm. Also, typical characteristic selected area electron diffraction (SAED) pattern showed the crystalline nature of AuNPs. The prepared AuNPs were loaded with zonisamide which can be used for future spinal cord injury repair applications. The fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) analysis represented the zonisamide loading onto AuNPs. The biological preparation of AuNPs using the bark extract of J. regia is prominent approach because of its eco friendly nature without using any toxic chemicals. The controlled-release of zonisamide-AuNPs was about 43.0 ± 2.2 nm with high stability and solubility under room temperature conditions. Further, the cytotoxicity results showed the comparatively higher toxicity of zonisamide-AuNPs towards CTX TNA2 cells than free zonisamide. Hence, zonisamide-AuNPs may act as very good clinical drug for future therapeutic treatment of spinal cord injury.