title: Toxicity of antimony trioxide nanoparticles on human hematopoietic progenitor cells and comparison to cell lines.
abstract: Nanoparticles (NPs) are materials with one dimension in the range of 1-100 nm. The toxicity of NPs remains widely unknown and still poses concerns, due to the peculiar characteristics of materials in the nano-size range. We analyze the toxicity of seven NPs ((Fe2O3, Fe3O4, Sb2O3, Au, TiO2, Co, and Ag) on primary cultures of human hematopoietic progenitor cells from the bone marrow of healthy donors with CFU assays, and show that antimony oxide (Sb2O3) NPs and cobalt (Co) NPs have a toxic effect, while the other NPs have no effect at the tested concentrations (5, 25 and 100 microg/ml). While Co NPs suspension is toxic to both erythroid and granulocytic-monocytic precursors, Sb2O3 NPs at 5 microg/ml are specifically toxic to erythroid colony development, suggesting a highly selective type of toxicity. With liquid culture assays we show that Sb2O3 NPs impair the proliferation of erythroid progenitors, while no toxic effect is observed when Sb2O3 NPs are added during erythroid differentiation. CFU assays and liquid culture assays on seven human cell lines of hematopoietic origin (K562, HL-60, CEM, CEM-R, Thp-1, Jurkat, and Molt-4) show that, contrary to what observed on primary cultures of bone marrow progenitors, Sb2O3 NPs have no toxic effect on proliferation of any of the cell lines, raising concerns about the use of immortalized cell lines for nanotoxicology tests.
authors.affiliation: Cellular Signaling Laboratory, Department of Anatomical Sciences, University of Bologna, via Irnerio 48, 40126 Bologna, Italy. lisa.bregoli@unibo.it
authors.forename: Lisa
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Bregoli
authors.forename: Francesca
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Chiarini
authors.forename: Andrea
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Gambarelli
authors.forename: Gianluca
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Sighinolfi
authors.forename: Antonietta M
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Gatti
authors.forename: Patrizia
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Santi
authors.forename: Alberto M
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Martelli
authors.forename: Lucio
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Cocco
mesh_terms: D000965:Antimony / Q000633:toxicity*; D001854:Bone Marrow Cells; D045744:Cell Line, Tumor; D049109:Cell Proliferation / Q000187:drug effects; D002470:Cell Survival / Q000187:drug effects; D003114:Colony-Forming Units Assay; D005434:Flow Cytometry; D006412:Hematopoietic Stem Cells / Q000187:drug effects* / Q000473:pathology; D006801:Humans; D053758:Nanoparticles / Q000737:chemistry / Q000633:toxicity*; D012542:Scattering, Radiation; D013234:Stem Cells / Q000187:drug effects / Q000648:ultrastructure
chemical_list: D000965:Antimony; C037554:antimony trioxide