Biosynthesized CuO as a Green and Efficient Nanophotocatalyst in the Solvent-Free Synthesis of Some Chromeno[4, 3-b]Chromenes. Studying anti- Gastric Cancer Activity

Abstract

Gastric cancer is a foremost one among many regular carcinoma cases globally and most of the enhanced treatments could not significantly decrease the mortality range of this cancer. The current work is planned to develop a new rote for the synthesis of a nanophotocatalyst and substituted chromenones that are effective drugs against gastric cancer. Thus, CuO as a new heterogeneous green nanophotocatalyst is biosynthesized from Cressa leaf extract and the prepared nanophotocatalyst is applied in the synthesis of chromenones under air by the mediation of a green color LED in a solventless condition. In addition, in order to obtain the optimum synthesis conditions for the photocatalytic process, a Central Composite Design (CCD) is also applied, which predicted the optimal temperature of 33.8 °C, reaction time of 69 min, and catalyst amount of 5.9 mg. Fortunately, these findings fitted well with the experimentally attained optimal conditions. Furthermore, reusability and stability tests guarantee acceptable reproducibility of the protocol. It is found that the photocatalytic reaction mainly occurs through a radical-based mechanism involving •O₂^-, OH^•, and h⁺. The significant features of this study invole the photocatalytic nature of the protocol with the irradiation of a commercially cheap LED, simple and inexpensive photocatalyst, low temperature, high yield, solvent-free, facile work-up, wide scope, and proper atom economy. At the final part of this report, the in-vitro cellular cytotoxicity of CuO nanoparticles and 3-nitro-substituted chromene is examined on KATO-III human gastric cell line with MTT assay. The reduction in cell viability confirmed cytotoxicity of these materials against the performed cancer cell line.

Keywords:

• heterogeneous
• nanophotocatalysis
• CuO
• chromenes
• gastric cancer
• KATO-III

Disclosure statement

On behalf of all authors, the corresponding author states that there is no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

The authors thanks to The Science and Technology Development Project of Shandong Province (No. ZR2017PH034).