Abstract
The interaction of promising nanoparticles with red blood cells (RBCs)
is a critical point to be addressed in nanomedicine and nanotoxicology,
and the hemolytic assay is a classical and common test used to evaluate
such interactions and the consequent nanoparticle toxicity. In addition,
the protein corona is an emergent concept in bionanoscience associated
with the manifestation of energetically driven protein-nanoparticle
interactions, with a great impact on the nanomaterial toxicity
assessment. In the convergence of these two concepts, we evaluated the
influence of the formation of the protein corona during the hemolysis
induced by spherical mesoporous silica nanoparticles with silanol groups
on the external surface (MSN-SiOH), which present a confirmed toxicity
on RBCs when they are dispersed as a colloid in phosphate buffer saline
solution (PBS). It was observed that human blood proteins such as human
serum albumin (HSA), human plasma (HP), hemoglobin (Hb), and RBC lysate,
termed hemolysate (HL), can suppress the hemolytic effect induced by
MSN-SiOH in a dose-dependent manner. The EC50 values of hemolysis
suppression were 24, 8.0, 19, and 28 mu gmL(-1) for HSA, HP, Hb, and HL,
respectively. This work thus shows that the results of the hemolytic
assay that defines the toxicity and bioreactivity of silica
nanoparticles (and others) must be interpreted as a function of the
formation of the protein corona.
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