The present communication reports the synthesis of silver‐containing bioactive glass by sol‐gel route, followed by fabrication of the antibacterial bioactive glass nanofibers (ABGnf, dia 200‐900 nm) using electrospinning technique. The ABGnf of composition 1‐2 mol% of B2O3, 68‐69 mol% of SiO2, ~1 × 10−3 mol% of Ag2O, and 29‐30 mol% of CaO was evaluated both for wound‐healing potential and for antibacterial efficacy. An in vitro cell proliferation/migration assay was performed using SV‐transformed GM00637 (skin fibroblast) cell line, wherein ABGnf exhibited significant cell proliferation (82%) compared to the control (47%) and ABGnf without boron (65%) in a period of 24 hours, thus establishing its wound‐healing potential. Further, the antibacterial activity was assessed in vitro using the bacterial strain of Staphylococcus aureus. The results showed the zone of inhibition to be almost two times the control group treated with a model aminoglycoside antibiotic, tobramycin. In addition to the above advantages, the in vitro cytotoxicity assay showed an excellent cellular response. All these results have established promising wound healing and antibacterial potential of ABGnf.

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Bismuth sulphide (Bi2S3) is an excellent semiconductor and its nanoparticles have numerous significant applications including photovoltaic materials, photodiode arrays, bio-imaging, etc. Nevertheless, these nanoparticles when fabricated by chemical and physical routes tend to easily aggregate in colloidal solutions, are eco-unfriendly, cumbrous and very broad in size distribution. The aim of the present manuscript was to ecologically fabricate water dispersible, safe and stable Bi2S3 nanoparticles such that these may find use in animal imaging, diagnostics, cell labeling and other biomedical applications. Herein, we for the first time have biosynthesized highly fluorescent, natural protein capped Bi2S3 nanoparticles by subjecting the fungus Fusarium oxysporum to bismuth nitrate pentahydrate [Bi(NO3)3.5H2O] alongwith sodium sulphite (Na2SO3) as precursor salts under ambient conditions of temperature, pressure and pH. The nanoparticles were completely characterized using recognized standard techniques. These natural protein capped Bi2S3 nanoparticles are quasi-spherical in shape with an average particle size of 15 nm, maintain long term stability and show semiconductor behavior having blue shift with a band gap of 3.04 eV. Semiconductor nanocrystals are fundamentally much more fluorescent than the toxic fluorescent chemical compounds (fluorophores) which are presently largely employed in imaging, immunohistochemistry, biochemistry, etc. Biologically fabricated fluorescent nanoparticles may replace organic fluorophores and aid in rapid development of biomedical nanotechnology. Thus, biodistribution study of the so-formed Bi2S3 nanoparticles in male Sprague Dawley rats was done by radiolabelling with Technitium-99m (Tc-99m) and clearance time from blood was calculated. The nanoparticles were then employed in SPECT-CT probe for animal imaging where these imparted iodine equivalent contrast.

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