Open questions: how do engineered nanomaterials affect our cells?
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Open questions: how do engineered nanomaterials affect our cells? Daniela Barrios1 and Laura Segatori1,2,3*
Abstract Our cells have evolutionarily conserved mechanisms that battle foreign and toxic materials to maintain cellular homeostasis and viability. How do these cellular machineries respond to engineered nanomaterials? Keywords: Nanomaterials, Autophagy, Nanotoxicity, Nano-bio interface, Biomimetic nanoparticles
How do nanomaterials affect biological systems? The use of nanomaterials in industrial and biomedical applications has prompted questions about the effects of nanomaterials on living systems, and ultimately human health. A wide range of consumer products ranging from sunscreens to candies contain engineered nanomaterials [1]. Conversely, nanomaterials are also used for biomedical purposes, such as the delivery of drugs, for instance in breast cancer chemotherapeutics [1]. We need, therefore, a detailed understanding of how nanomaterials affect our bodies to engineer safe nanomaterial-based products for human use. Nanomaterials can be manufactured from a variety of chemical elements through either the controlled assembly of atoms and molecules or the breakdown of larger materials into nano-sized structures. Nanomaterials are generally defined as having at least one dimension that is less than 100 nm and they may be produced in the form of particles, tubes, rods, or fibers. While they may present the same composition as known materials in bulk form, due to their nano-size and high surface area, nanomaterials often possess unique physicochemical properties. Leveraging these unique properties at the nanoscale allows designing nanomaterial-based products with desired and * Correspondence: [email protected] 1 Department of Bioengineering, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA 2 Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
often precisely tunable features for a diverse range of applications. The features of nanomaterial-based products depend on the specific physicochemical properties of nanomaterials, which can be easily modulated with respect to core composition, size, shape, charge, and surface functionalization. These properties determine the nature of the interaction with cells and organisms and, ultimately, our bodies. For this reason, there is an emerging need to characterize these interactions as a function of nanomaterial physicochemical properties. Most research efforts have focused on toxicology studies as part of the safety analysis of nanomaterials used in biomedical applications. Even nanomaterials that are considered safe based on cell death studies are likely to affect biological systems. However, the interactions between nanomaterials and human cells and their components remain largely uncharacterized, and fundamental questions about cellular responses ranging from the uptake of nanomaterials, to their effects on specific cellular machineries, are only now bein
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