Abundant metallic and metal oxide particles such as Pb, Fe, Cu, ZnO, TiO and CuO are found in ambient particulate matter (PM) and their biomedical mechanisms involved in pathological and physiological processes have been well validated. Nevertheless, the roles of metallic or metal oxide PM in cell biophysical dynamics and biomechanical properties are still obscured. In this study, we utilized CuO nanoparticles (NPs) to imitate the PM-induced biomechanical impacts. Two human hepatoma cell lines of well-differentiated HepG2 cells and poorly differentiated SK-Hep-1 cells were selected to monitor the CuO NPs-induced the heterogeneity of cellular surface topography, stiffness, and adhesiveness using AFM analysis and immunofluorescence assay. Our results demonstrated that CuO NPs significantly increase cellular surface roughness, actin cytoskeleton reorganization and increased nuclear condensation in SK-Hep-1 cells. Moreover, AFM force-distance curve verified that CuO NPs effectively decrease Young’s modulus and cellular adhesion forces in SK-Hep-1 cells rather than in HepG2 cells. In addition, CuO NPs-induced biomechanical properties in subcellular regions of both cell lines were further analyzed. As compared to HepG2 cells, our results further revealed that CuO NPs increase a significant Young’s modulus elasticity of non-periphery regions and elicit an extremely attenuation of adhesion forces on both periphery and non-periphery subcellular regions in SK-Hep-1 cells. Therefore, this study demonstrated that CuO NPs perturb the biomechanical properties and induce the actin cytoskeleton reorganization, which was associated with ROS generation and accumulation, have played important roles in CuO NPs-mediated cytotoxicity. Altogether, our results show a comprehensive approach to monitor the cell mechanics in a well-differentiated vs poorly differentiated cells which are quite significant to understand the physical nature of cancer and exploring novel diagnosis methods. This study is beneficial in the aspect of evaluating nanomechanics in the context of estimating cytotoxicity and oxidative stress mainly induced by chemical nanoparticles, especially the metal oxide nanomaterials.

Effects in cellular physicochemical properties by copper oxide nanoparticulate matter

2019 Fall National Meeting

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.