Anti-metastatic activity of biologically synthesized gold nanoparticles on human fibrosarcoma cell line HT-1080

•Au-NPs were synthesized for the first time using aqueous rhizome extract of Dysomsa pleiantha as a novel reducing agent.•The synthesized Dp-AuNPs has no toxic effects on HT-1080 cells viability.•The Dp-AuNPs blocks the cell migration of HT-1080 cell line by interfering actin polymerization pathway.•The Rac1 GTP level was decreased in the Dp-AuNPs treated HT-1080 cells.•Taken together, the synthesized Dp-AuNPs shows effective anti-metasatic activity against human fibrosarcoma cell line HT-1080. Plants are exploited as a potential source for the large-scale production of noble gold nanoparticles in the recent years owing to their various potential applications in nanobiotechnology and nanomedicine. The present work describes green biosynthetic procedures for the production of gold nanoparticles for the first time by using an aqueous extract of the Dysosma pleiantha rhizome. The biosynthesized gold nanoparticles were confirmed and characterized by ultraviolet–visible spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy, and scanning electron microscopy equipped with energy dispersive spectroscopy. The results revealed that aqueous extract of D. pleiantha rhizome has potential to reduce chloroauric ions into gold nanoparticles and the synthesized gold nanoparticles were showed spherical in shape with an average of 127nm. Further, we investigated the anti-metastatic activity of biosynthesized gold nanoparticles against human fibrosarcoma cancer cell line HT-1080. The results showed that the biosynthesized gold nanoparticles were non-toxic to cell proliferation and, also it can inhibit the chemo-attractant cell migration of human fibrosarcoma cancer cell line HT-1080 by interfering the actin polymerization pathway. Thus, the usage of gold nanoparticles biosynthesized from D. pleiantha rhizome can be used as a potential candidate in the drug and gene delivery to metastatic cancer.