A
physicist and a medical researcher at the University
of Leicester have received a grant of £100,000
from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research
Council to look at possible toxic damage from inhaled
nanoparticles used for a range of everyday purposes
The small size of nanoparticles in the size range
5-100 nm gives many novel and useful properties and
they are used in applications as diverse as face
creams, plastics, medical imaging, novel drug therapies
and magnetic recording. Such particles are increasingly
manufactured and released into the environment on
industrial scales.
However, there is growing concern that the very
same properties that make them so useful may also
lead to enhanced toxicity if the particles are breathed
in. The particles are so small - 100,000 particles
laid end-to-end would only stretch a few millimetres
- that it is not clear how the body's normal defence
mechanisms will cope with them.
By
harnessing their combined expertise in physics
and medicine, Dr Paul Howes, Department of Physics & Astronomy,
and Dr Jonathan Grigg, Department of Infection, Immunity
and Inflammation, will research possible toxic damage
from inhaled nanoparticles.
Dr
Howes and Dr Grigg will produce macrophages from
human blood monocytes and expose them, in vitro,
to an aerosol of metal nanoparticles, measuring
any toxic damage to their DNA. Precise control
over the size, chemical composition and dose of
particles with enable them to determine whether
there is a correlation between size and toxicity.
The potential for genotoxicity (and therefore increased
vulnerability to lung cancer) is an important factor
when setting national air quality guidelines for
particles. It is envisaged that this exposure technique,
which more closely mimics "real life" exposure,
will allow genotoxicity to be assessed for a wide
range of manufactured nanoparticles.
Monocyte-derived macrophages were chosen since airway
macrophages are a part of the body's immune system
and normally reside deep in the lungs where they
form the first line of defence against inhaled particles.
Dr Howes commented:
"I
am excited at the potential of this collaborative research
that will enable us to study the crucially important
question of nanoparticle toxicology. The new aerosol
spectrometer purchase from the grant, combined with
the University's existing microscopy facility, will
give us unique ability to characterise and control
the aerosol to answer fundamental questions about the
interaction of nanoparticles with the human immune
system."
Dr Grigg said:
"This
research may have profound implications for nanotechnology,
if exposure of lung cells to low levels of highly reactive
particles induces significant genotoxicity." Further
information is available from Dr Paul Howes, Department
of Physics & Astronomy,
University of Leicester, tel 0116 252 3587, email Paul.Howes@leicester.ac.uk ;
or from Dr Jonathan Grigg, Department of Infection, Immunity and Inflammation,
Medical School, University of Leicester, tel 0116 252 5810, email jg33@leicester.ac.uk The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) is the UK's
main agency for funding research in engineering and the physical sciences.
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