Green facile synthesis of low-toxic superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPIONs) and their cytotoxicity effects toward Neuro2A and HUVEC cell lines

Superparamagnetic iron oxide (Fe3O4) nanoparticles (SPIONs) were synthesized by co-precipitation using polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) as a capping agent under alkaline condition. The produced X-ray diffraction (XRD) pattern evidenced the presence of peaks corresponding to the inverse spinel structure of the prepared SPIONs. Debye-Scherrer and field emission scanning microscopy (FESEM) showed the prepared SPIONs to be well-defined with about < 50 nm size. Likewise, the superparamagnetic properties of the SPIONs measured by Vibrating Sample Magnetometer (VSM) showed high saturation magnetization (~ 65.36 emu/g). The in vitro cytotoxicity studies on Neuro2A and HUVEC cells have mentioned low toxic and non-toxic SPIONs, respectively in a range of concentrations (1.17-150 μg/ml), thus, we reckon that the synthesized SPIONs will have persistent utilization in different fields of medical applications.