Abstract

Two-dimensional (2D) materials have emerged as an important class of nanomaterials for technological innovation due to their remarkable physicochemical properties, including sheet-like morphology and minimal thickness, high surface area, tuneable chemical composition, and surface functionalization. These materials are being proposed for new applications in energy, health, and the environment; these are all strategic society sectors toward sustainable development. Specifically, 2D materials for nano-imaging have shown exciting opportunities in in vitro and in vivo models, providing novel molecular imaging techniques such as computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, fluorescence and luminescence optical imaging and others. Therefore, given the growing interest in 2D materials, it is mandatory to evaluate their impact on the immune system in a broader sense, because it is responsible for detecting and eliminating foreign agents in living organisms. This mini-review presents an overview on the frontier of research involving 2D materials applications, nano-imaging and their immunosafety aspects. Finally, we highlight the importance of nanoinformatics approaches and computational modeling for a deeper understanding of the links between nanomaterial physicochemical properties and biological responses (immunotoxicity/biocompatibility) towards enabling immunosafety-by-design 2D materials.

Highlights

  • Two-dimensional (2D) materials constitutes an emerging class of nanomaterials, characterized mainly by their high surface-area-to-mass ratio due to a sheet-like morphology; responsible for their outstanding physicochemical properties with a currently leading position in materials science and technology [1, 2]

  • 2D materials have been developed to be applied in molecular imaging techniques, such as computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), optical imaging, and nuclear imaging including positron emission tomography (PET) and single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) [19]

  • It is important to clarify here that the S-graphene oxide (GO) in this study presented similar lateral size of the LGO in the previous studies cited, which means that all these studies are in agreement, and we may erroneously interpret them because attention to the lateral size was not devoted

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Summary

INTRODUCTION

Two-dimensional (2D) materials constitutes an emerging class of nanomaterials, characterized mainly by their high surface-area-to-mass ratio due to a sheet-like morphology; responsible for their outstanding physicochemical properties (e.g., electronic, optical, mechanical, and magnetic) with a currently leading position in materials science and technology [1, 2]. Given the applicability and growing interests in 2D materials, unveiling their impact on the immune system is a key step towards safe use and responsible innovation [21, 22] These materials’ intrinsic characteristics, such as chemical composition, surface chemistry, functionalization, morphology, lateral size, purity, and crystallinity are directed related to their degradability, dispersion stability, and protein corona profile; their adverse effects in a biological system [23,24,25,26]. Besides to assess the effect of lateral size, Duarte and coworkers [109] investigated the impacts of two different surfaces functionalization: pegylated graphene oxide (GO-PEG, 200–500 nm) and flavin mononucleotide-stabilized pristine graphene with two different sizes (200–400 nm and 100–200 nm) Their results showed that the cellular uptake of GBMs was mainly influenced by their lateral size, with smaller particles showing greater internalization, while the inflammatory response depended on the type of functionalization, with GO-PEG showing the lower pro-inflammatory potential.

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