56Co-labelled radioactive Fe3O4 nanoparticles for in vitro uptake studies on Balb/3T3 and Caco-2 cell lines

Magnetite nanoparticles (Fe3O4 NPs) are one of the manufactured nanomaterials increasingly used in healthcare for different medical applications from diagnosis to therapy. In the present work Fe3O4 NPs have been irradiated with a proton beam in order to produce 56Co as radiolabel and the possibility has been investigated to use nuclear techniques for the quantification of these Fe3O4 NPs in biological systems. In particular, the size distribution and surface charge of the NPs have been characterized before and after the irradiation process in order to verify that these essential properties were preserved during the irradiation. The radiation emitted from the radiolabels has then been used to quantify the cellular uptake of these NPs in in-vitro studies. For biological applications two cell lines were selected: immortalized mouse fibroblast cell line (Balb/3T3) and human epithelial colorectal adenocarcinoma cell line (Caco-2). At each step of this study, the cell uptake has been quantified by activity measurements of the 56Co. These measurements were performed with the high resolution ¿-ray spectrometry. This study showed that under well established irradiation conditions, Fe3O4 NPs do not undergo significant structural modifications and the obtained results are in line with uptake studies using the same non activated nanomaterial. Therefore the radiolabelling method can be useful to study uptake due to low-level exposure where a higher sensitivity is required.

MARMORATO Patrick;  SIMONELLI Federica;  ABBAS Kamel;  KOZEMPEL Jan;  HOLZWARTH Uwe;  FRANCHINI Fabio;  PONTI Jessica;  ROSSI Francois;  GIBSON Peter; 

2012-01-17

SPRINGER

JRC62501

1388-0764,   

http://www.springerlink.com/content/x585371558107780/,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC62501,   

10.1007/s11051-011-0577-7,