Nanomaterials genotoxicity assessment: from in vivo observation to in vitro highthroughput screening micronucleus test Vecchio G1, Galeone A2, Malvindi MA2, Maiorano G2, Brunetti V2, Fenech M3, Voelcker NH1 and Pompa PP2 1 Mawson Institute, University of South Australia, Mawson Lakes, SA, Australia 2 Center for Biomolecular Nanotechnologies of IIT@UniLe, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Arnesano (LE), Italy 3 CSIRO Food and Nutritional Sciences, Adelaide, SA 5000, Australia
[email protected] [email protected] The rapidly developing field of nanotechnology and the peculiar physical/chemical characteristics of engineered nanomaterials (NMs) continue to contribute to the increased presence of nanotechnology-based products in a wide number of commercial goods. This source of anthropogenic NMs may create a significant risk to the environment and human health, increasing the odds for our body to get in contact with them directly (eg through inhalation, ingestion, skin uptake, and injection of NMs) or indirectly (eg through the food chain, water, soil and air pollution). In this context, the screening of the biological impact of nanomaterials is of crucial importance. Using Drosophila melanogaster as a model organism to evaluate the toxicity of NMs was demonstrated that the administration by ingestion cause many adverse effects such as shortened lifespan, decreased fertility, increased levels of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and overexpression of different marker genes involved in the response to stress, apoptosis and DNA damage. Furthermore, we evaluated the presence of DNA damage finding that it depends on different physical parameters of engineered NMs1. However, the most interesting result was the demonstration of mutagenic effects of NMs. In fact, we observed that exposure to 15 nm citratecapped AuNPs may result in the presence of significant phenotypic aberrations in the progeny of treated organisms2. On the other side, using CdSe/ZnS QDs with different surface coatings, we observed diverse genotoxic effects as a function of their surface modification. This data suggest that genotoxic effects could be prevented by using proper surface engineering of the nanoparticles and highlight the urgent need to carefully characterise their physical/chemical properties to make them safer as well as to develop reliable testing strategies for NMs genotoxicity. With this in mind, we are currently developing high-throughput technology to investigate nanomaterial genotoxicity in primary lymphocytes and immortalised cell lines based on a microarray platform and we will present preliminary results.
References 1) Vecchio G. et al. Concentration-Dependent, Size-Independent Toxicity of Citrate Capped AuNPs in Drosophila melanogaster. PloS ONE, 2012, 7 (1), e29980 2) Vecchio G. et al. Mutagenic effects of gold nanoparticles induce aberrant phenotypes in Drosophila melanogaster. Nanomedicine: NBM, 2012, 8:1–7
