Abstract
BackgroundGraphene oxide (GO) is a highly oxidized graphene form with oxygen functional groups on its surface. GO is an excellent platform to support and stabilize silver nanoparticles (AgNP), which gives rise to the graphene oxide-silver nanoparticle (GOAg) nanocomposite. Understanding how this nanocomposite interacts with cells is a toxicological challenge of great importance for future biomedical applications, and macrophage cells can provide information concerning the biocompatibility of these nanomaterials. The cytotoxicity of the GOAg nanocomposite, pristine GO, and pristine AgNP was compared toward two representative murine macrophages: a tumoral lineage (J774) and peritoneal macrophages collected from Balb/c mouse. The production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) by J774 macrophages was also monitored. We investigated the internalization of nanomaterials by transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The quantification of internalized silver was carried out by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). Nanomaterial stability in the cell media was investigated overtime by visual observation, inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP OES), and dynamic light scattering (DLS).ResultsThe GOAg nanocomposite was more toxic than pristine GO and pristine AgNP for both macrophages, and it significantly induced more ROS production compared to pristine AgNP. TEM analysis showed that GOAg was internalized by tumoral J774 macrophages. However, macrophages internalized approximately 60 % less GOAg than did pristine AgNP. The images also showed the degradation of nanocomposite inside cells.ConclusionsAlthough the GOAg nanocomposite was less internalized by the macrophage cells, it was more toxic than the pristine counterparts and induced remarkable oxidative stress. Our findings strongly reveal a synergistic toxicity effect of the GOAg nanocomposite. The toxicity and fate of nanocomposites in cells are some of the major concerns in the development of novel biocompatible materials and must be carefully evaluated.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12951-016-0165-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
Graphene oxide (GO) is a highly oxidized graphene form with oxygen functional groups on its surface
Neither study addressed the IC50 values, our findings reveal that concentrations of GO below 12.5 μg mL−1 did not significantly reduce the viability of J774 macrophages (Fig. 3a) after 48 h, which are in agreement with Mendes et al and Yue et al no significant viability reduction of peritoneal macrophages was observed for GO at concentrations below 25 μg mL−1, regardless of the exposure time (Fig. 3b)
In this work, we assessed the toxicity of graphene oxidesilver nanocomposite and its pristine counterparts toward macrophages from a tumoral lineage and collected from mouse peritoneum
Summary
Graphene oxide (GO) is a highly oxidized graphene form with oxygen functional groups on its surface. GO is an excellent platform to support and stabilize silver nanoparticles (AgNP), which gives rise to the graphene oxide-silver nanoparticle (GOAg) nanocomposite. Understanding how this nanocomposite interacts with cells is a toxicological challenge of great importance for future biomedical applications, and macrophage cells can provide information concerning the biocompatibility of these nanomaterials. The high surface area of GO sheets serves as a support for growth and stabilization of nanoparticles [9], which prevents them from aggregating As these silver-based nanocomposites have excellent antimicrobial properties [10,11,12,13,14], they represent an alternative to the inefficacies of long-used antibiotics
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