Online monitoring of cell metabolism to assess the toxicity of nanoparticles: the case of cobalt ferrite.

Different in vitro assays are successfully used to determine the relative cytotoxicity of a broad range of compounds. Nevertheless, different research groups have pointed out the difficulty in using the same tests to assess the toxicity of nanoparticles (NPs). In this study, we evaluated the possible use of a microphysiometer, Bionas 2500 analyzing system Bionas GmbH®, to detect in real time changes in cell metabolisms linked to NPs exposure. We focused our work on response changes of fibroblast cultures linked to exposure by cobalt ferrite NPs and compared the results to conventional in vitro assays. The measurements with the microphysiometer showed a cobalt ferrite cytotoxic effect, confirmed by the Colony Forming Efficiency assay. In conclusion, this work demonstrated that the measurement of metabolic parameters with a microphysiometer is a promising method to assess the toxicity of NPs and offers the advantage to follow on-line the cell metabolic changes.