Vast variety of silver nanoparticles (AgNP) continue to evolve and become part of our daily lives in different forms of consumer products such as food packaging, drug delivery systems, cosmetics, clothing, electronics and etc. With the enormous range of differences in existing AgNP, studying toxicity of every kind can take a lifetime.  Knowing this fact at hand, our group quantified and qualified toxicity of 10 nm citrate stabilized AgNP obtained from Nanocomposix by determining cell viability, EC50, oxidative stress levels, proteins affected, and difference in cell morphology of treated HepG2 cells and reviewed available toxicity studies on AgNP on HepG2 cells and other cells.  Our results showed that for 48h treatment of 10 nm citrate stabilized AgNP a dosage of >1ppm is toxic to HepG2 cells and EC50 was determined to be 3ppm.  Oxidative stress level in the cells were found to increase with dosage of AgNP and HepG2 cells were found to withstand high level of reactive oxygen species before cell death.  At a high dosage of 5ppm, the AgNP were observed to penetrate the cells. Few of the interesting protein affected with treatment of the AgNP were the 60 kDA heat shock protein, fatty acid synthase and histone family proteins which are involve in several important metabolism functions.

Toxicity of citrate stabilized silver nanoparticles to HepG2 cells

246th National Meeting (2013)

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