State Key Laboratory of Environmental Chemistry and Ecotoxicology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
Chemosphere. 2013 Jul;92(5):576-82. doi: 10.1016/j.chemosphere.2013.03.058. Epub 2013 May 3.
Functionalization is an important technique to increase the solubility and biocompatibility of single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs). In this study, we investigated the cytotoxicity of four types of SWCNTs functionalized with hydroxyl, amino, carboxyl and polyethyleneglycol on MCF7 cells. These functionalized SWCNTs (f-SWCNTs) have insignificant effects on mitochondrial activity and ROS production in MCF7 cells at all test concentrations. However, explicit results revealed that all the tested f-SWCNTs could cause changes of cell morphology, induce cell membrane damage, decrease cell adhesion, and increase cell apoptosis. Therefore, this study shows the potential side effects of f-SWCNTs accompanying with the increase of dispersibility and stability in environment or serum (to prevent their aggregation), and highlights the need for further research to examine the potential toxicity of f-SWCNTs before they are used in the environmental and biomedical fields.
功能化是一种提高单壁碳纳米管（SWCNTs）溶解度和生物相容性的重要技术。在这项研究中，我们研究了四种功能化的 SWCNTs（羟基、氨基、羧基和聚乙二醇）对 MCF7 细胞的细胞毒性。在所有测试浓度下，这些功能化的 SWCNTs（f-SWCNTs）对 MCF7 细胞的线粒体活性和 ROS 产生没有显著影响。然而，明确的结果表明，所有测试的 f-SWCNTs 都可能导致细胞形态发生变化，诱导细胞膜损伤，降低细胞黏附力，并增加细胞凋亡。因此，本研究表明，随着 f-SWCNTs 在环境或血清中分散性和稳定性的提高（以防止聚集），可能会伴随出现潜在的副作用，并强调在将 f-SWCNTs 应用于环境和生物医学领域之前，需要进一步研究其潜在毒性。
