Ewa Mulkiewicz in National Institute for Environmetal Studies in Tsukuba

I visited the National Institute for Environmental Studies in Tsukuba, Japan from 3.05.2013 till 30.07.2013 as a part of Work Package 2 “Carrying out experiments to produce necessary (missing) data for NPs”.

During this time I worked on selection and optimisation of reliable in vitro method employing mammalian cell line as a model system to assess toxicity of engineered nanomaterials especially titanium dioxide modified with noble metals (Au, Pd. Ag, Pt). Different mammalian cell lines (A549, BEAS-2B, J774.1 and CHO-ARE)were tested for their sensitivity to the selected NPs. Since the primary and secondary sizes of NPs are regarded as important parameters for in vitro cytotoxicity therefore the behavior of the NPs in cell culture medium was evaluated through dynamic light scattering (DLS) to optimise the suspension preparation procedure in order to reduce the aggregation and secondary size of NPs before exposure experiments.

As the result of secondment the experimental data applicable for computational modelling of toxic potential (determined with CHO-ARE cell line using WST-8 assay) of titanium dioxide NPs modified with noble metals (Au, Pd, Ag, Pt) synthesized using microemulsion and sol-gel methods were obtained.