ABSTRACT
Nowadays, nanotechnology has laid a strong foundation for the technological revolution and transformation in medicine, applied science, and engineering. Among renewable and available natural resources, medicinal plants and their biomass have attracted the attention of the scientific community due to their easy availability, ability, and flexibility to choose and use any parts of the plants (leaf, root, stem, flower, bark, fruit, seed, nut, etc.), less complexity during synthesis and low cost. In addition, medicinal plants that have been used as folk medicine throughout the world possess various metabolites (i.e., primary and secondary metabolites). Plant metabolites such as terpenoids, flavonoids, steroids, tannins, proteins, lipids, starches, etc. encompass several functional groups viz, thiols (−SH), carbonyls (–C=O), hydroxyls (–OH), amines (–NH2), amides (–C=ONH2), ethoxy (–C–O–C), and carboxylic acid (–COOH) that directly or indirectly reduce precursor compounds to nanoparticles and play a vital role in capping and stabilizing the resulting particles. Cautiously and carefully prepared medicinal plant-mediated nanoparticles can be applied for drug delivery, as anticancer, antimicrobial, and antioxidant agents to treat different degenerative and cardiovascular diseases. Nanoparticles synthesis employing medicinal plant metabolites has attracted our interest as they are enriched with various active phytochemicals with the ability to reduce, cap, and stabilize various nanomaterials. Thus, this chapter aims to survey some medicinal plants and their metabolites that have the potential to reduce various bulk materials to intended nanoparticles and their cutting-edge applications in different sectors.
