Abstract
Proline is water soluble amino acid extensively used in drug delivery systems. Compounds of cobalt (Co) transition metal have potent antimicrobial and anticancer activities. However, a drug delivery system combining proline cobalt is not reported yet. For the first time, new hybrid semi-organic single crystals of proline cobalt chloride (PCC) are prepared. The novelty of the article is also that single crystal proline cobalt chloride showed potent antimicrobial and antitumor activity. Doping of PCC by Ag
0
NPs significantly increased these biological activities. The anisotropic magnetic properties of single crystals can mitigate the cytotoxicity of Ag
0
NPs on normal cells. Silver nanoparticles (Ag
0
NPs) improved the crystal habits and physicochemical properties. Ag
0
NPs showed the best performance, paramagnetic materials n-type semiconductors due to delocalized excess electrons of Ag
0
NPs incorporated in the crystal lattice interstitially. Crystals have high absorptivity for UV-radiation electromagnetic radiation. Ag
0
NPs enhanced AC electrical conductivity up to 2.3 × 10
4
Ω cm
−1
due to high electron density. Proline doped crystals are obtained in good purity as triclinic unit cell with having anisotropic magnetism. PCCAg
0
NPs crystal exhibited: high antimicrobial activities to various bacterial and fungal species, inhibition zone (mm): 21, 25, 24, 26, 30, 28, 12, and 46 for
S. aureus
,
E. faecalis
,
S. typhi
,
E. coli
,
P. aerugino
,
K. pneumoniae
,
A. braselienses
, and
C. albicans
, respectively, in comparison to ciprofloxacin antibiotic (23, 0, 26, 26, 25, 0, 0, 0) for the same tested species, respectively; higher cytotoxicity against breast cancer cells (IC
50
22.1 μM) than the reference drug cisplatin (IC
50
11.7 μM); and lower cytotoxicity to normal healthy lung cells MRC-5, (IC
50
145.5 μM) than cisplatin (IC
50
30.2 μM). Hence, this crystal is a candidate for chemotherapy of breast cancer.