Inflammatory and Oxidative Stress Responses of an Alveolar Epithelial Cell Line to Airborne Zinc Oxide Nanoparticles at the Air-liquid Interface: a Comparison with Conventional, Submerged Cell-culture Conditions

Overview

Journal Biomed Res Int

Publisher Wiley

Specialties Biomedical Engineering
Biotechnology
General Medicine

Date 2013 Mar 14

PMID 23484138

Citations 62

Authors

Anke-Gabriele Lenz

Erwin Karg

Ellen Brendel

Helga Hinze-Heyn

Konrad L Maier

Oliver Eickelberg

Tobias Stoeger

Otmar Schmid

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

The biological effects of inhalable nanoparticles have been widely studied in vitro with pulmonary cells cultured under submerged and air-liquid interface (ALI) conditions. Submerged exposures are experimentally simpler, but ALI exposures are physiologically more realistic and hence potentially biologically more meaningful. In this study, we investigated the cellular response of human alveolar epithelial-like cells (A549) to airborne agglomerates of zinc oxide (ZnO) nanoparticles at the ALI, compared it to the response under submerged culture conditions, and provided a quantitative comparison with the literature data on different types of particles and cells. For ZnO nanoparticle doses of 0.7 and 2.5 μ g ZnO/cm(2) (or 0.09 and 0.33 cm(2) ZnO/cm(2)), cell viability was not mitigated and no significant effects on the transcript levels of oxidative stress markers (HMOX1, SOD-2 and GCS) were observed. However, the transcript levels of proinflammatory markers (IL-8, IL-6, and GM-CSF) were induced to higher levels under ALI conditions. This is consistent with the literature data and it suggests that in vitro toxicity screening of nanoparticles with ALI cell culture systems may produce less false negative results than screening with submerged cell cultures. However, the database is currently too scarce to draw a definite conclusion on this issue.

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