1109 J. Indian Chem. Soc., Vol. 96, August 2019, pp. 1109-1116 Toxicity of pristine and -cyclodextrin modified mesoporous alumina towards normal and cancer cell lines Pritam Singh a , Sanchaita Mondal b , Moumita Saha b , Krishna Das Saha b *, P. K. Maiti c and Kamalika Sen a * a Department of Chemistry, c Department of Chemical Technology, University of Calcutta, 92, Acharya Prafulla Chandra Road, Kolkata-700 009, India E- mail: kamalchem.roy@gmail.com b CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Biology, 4, Raja S. C. Mullick Road, Jadavpur, Kolkata-700 032, India E- mail: chem.sanchaita@gmail.com, moumitasahaiicb@gmail.com, krishna@iicb.res.in Manuscript received online 17 July 2019, revised and accepted 26 July 2019 Mesoporous alumina and its modifications are in vogue for their medical applications. These are mostly used for controlled delivery of different drugs for their internal porous configuration. However, studies on their candidature to be used for des- truction of live cancer and normal cells are still in dearth. Herein, we report the synthesis and characterization of mesoporous alumina together with its modification using a carbohydrate, -cyclodextrin (BCD). Thereafter we report on the cytotoxicity of these materials towards colon cancer cells (HCT 116) and normal kidney cells (HEK 293) together. The IC 50 values of the pristine alumina and the BCD modified alumina were found to be 15.61 ng/mL and 23.39 ng/mL respectively for HCT 116. It has been observed that both the materials can be perceived to be potential reagents for destruction of cancer cells. Keywords: Mesopororous alumina, -cyclodextrin, HCT 116, HEK 293, cytotoxicity. Introduction An exponential growth of research in the field of nanotechnology especially mesoporous materials has been observed in the recent years. This trend of the modern sci- ence community towards mesoporous materials is quite ob- vious as these materials posses some unique properties such as high surface area, tunable pore size, higher stability, easy functionalization compared to that of the bulk materials. These properties make them novel and distinguished candidates for a variety of applications 1–4 . Alumina is one such candidate that has different applica- tions in several branches of science. The most interesting property of such materials lies in their wear resistance capa- bility and antimicrobial activity. Due to such properties, mesoporous alumina has found its application in the medi- cal field as a ceramic material in the contemporary organ replacement therapy. In fact it has been used in hip joint prosthesis. It has also found applications in biochemical fields such as biosensors, protein separations, drug delivery, etc. 5–7 . However, the use of such candidates also results in their exposure to the living systems. Therefore, the impact of nanomaterials on biological systems has become manda- tory 8 and has bred a new field of research known as “nanotoxicology”. This term has captured our attention with the growth of their gradual penetration in industrial and so- cial platforms 9 . Now a basic question arises regarding the reason be- hind such toxicity. A clear and an obvious answer to this query rely on the interaction between the nanomaterials and the cells of the living system. Particle size of such materials is anticipated to play a decisive role behind the extent of toxic- ity as smaller particles are likely to invade and penetrate the cell wall, enter into the cellular matrix, create an imbalance in the biochemical system therein causing cell damage 10 . Nanodimensional aluminum oxide shows numerous re- ports on toxicological assays in the literature 11 . Chen et al. reported that aluminium oxide nanoparticles reduced the cell viability of human brain microvascular endothelial cells by alteration in the potential of mitochondria 12 . The mechanism