Engineered Nanoparticles and the Immune System: Interaction and Consequences
During the last two decades, engineered nanomaterial/nanoparticles have emerged in different fields of our daily life. In fact they are used for a variety of applications, such as colour pigments, solar cells, and waste water treatment. Furthermore, nanop
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Engineered Nanoparticles and the Immune System: Interaction and Consequences Paola Italiani and Diana Boraschi
Contents 9.1 9.2
Introduction: The Human Immune System..................................................................... Nanoparticles: Do They Pose a New Challenge to Our Immune System? Interaction and Consequences......................................................................................... 9.3 Nanoparticle Interactions with the Innate Immune System ............................................ 9.4 NP Interactions with Adaptive Immune System ............................................................. 9.5 NP and Healthy vs. Frail Immunity ................................................................................ 9.6 How to Assess Immuno-Nanosafety: Animal Models vs. In Vitro Models.................... 9.7 The “Ecological Immunity”: Nanoparticles as Environmental Stressors (Damage vs. Evolutionary Shaping) ............................................................................... 9.8 Conclusions ..................................................................................................................... References ................................................................................................................................
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Introduction: The Human Immune System
The immune system is the guardian of the human body and works to protect its integrity and to defend it against external and internal injuries. In physiological conditions, the immune system monitors the body in order to remove dead and damaged cells, thereby maintaining tissue homeostasis. Upon encounter with invading pathogens or environmentally borne dangerous chemicals, the immune system reacts to the foreign agents by launching a destructive attack aiming at eliminating
P. Italiani Institute of Biomedical Technologies, National Research Council (CNR), Segrate, Italy D. Boraschi (*) Institute of Protein Biochemistry, National Research Council (CNR), Naples, Italy e-mail: [email protected] © Springer-Verlag Wien 2016 C. Esser (ed.), Environmental Influences on the Immune System, DOI 10.1007/978-3-7091-1890-0_9
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the danger. Effective protection must be rapid (leaving no time for the dangerous agent to enter the inner parts of the body and cause damage) and specific (targeting the dangerous agent only and sparing the surrounding cells and tissue). To guarantee both characteristics, in mammals, including man, immunity relies on two different sets of effector mechanisms: innate immunity and adaptive immunity. Innate immunity is an ancient defensive system (almost identical in invertebrates) that has the advantage of immediate reaction (rapidity) every time that a challenge is met. Innate immunity is also able to make a first “selection” of foreign agents and mount an inflammatory reaction to those perceived as potentially dangerous. Despite this selection capacity, innate immunity is not truly specific, as it r
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