Comparative study of the cytotoxicity of the nanosized and microsized tellurium powders on HeLa cells

Abstract

To compare the cytotoxicity on HeLa cells induced by nanosized and microsized tellurium powders, HeLa cells were exposed to different concentrations of tellurium powders (0, 50, 100, 150 and 200 μg/mL) for 12 h. In this study, detection of a series of biomarkers, including reactive oxygen species (ROS), glutathione (GSH), 8-hydroxy-2'-deoxyguanosine (8-OHdG), in addition to DNA and protein crosslink (DPC) and MTT assay, were conducted to evaluate the cytotoxicity. It is indicated that compared with the control group, there was no significant difference in the induced cytotoxicity at concentrations lower than 50 μg/mL for both nanosized and microsized tellurium powders. While there appears a significant difference in the induced cytotoxicity for nanosized tellurium powders when the concentration is higher than 100 μg/mL as well as for microsized tellurium powders when the concentration is higher than 200 μg/mL. Moreover, it is found that the cytotoxicity induced on HeLa cells exhibits a certain dose-effect relationship with the concentration of tellurium powders. A conclusion has been reached that the toxicity on HeLa cells can be induced by both nanosized and microsized tellurium powders, and the toxicity of the nanosized tellurium powders is significantly greater than the microsized one.

Keywords

nanosized and microsized tellurium powder / HeLa cells / oxidative damage / reactive oxygen species (ROS) / glutathione (GSH) / DNA and protein crosslink (DPC) / 8-hydroxy-2'-deoxyguanosine (8-OHdG)

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the grants of the Chinese National Natural Science Foundation (Grant No. 21103059) and the Innovative Experiment Program for University Students of Chinese Ministry of Education.

Compliance with ethics guidelines

Conflict of interest

Huanan Wen, Jiaxin Zhong, Bei Shen, Tao Gan, Chao Fu, Zhihong Zhu, Rui Li, Xu Yang declare that they have no conflict of interest. This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by the any of the any of the authors.

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2014 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg