Vega-Alvarez, Sascha M.

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    Drosophila as a versatile in vivo testbed for nanomaterial toxicity assessment.
    (2012) Vega-Alvarez, Sascha M.; Carrero-Martínez, Franklin; College of Arts and Sciences - Sciences; Rinaldi, Carlos; Washington, Anthony V.; Department of Biology; Camayd, Elvia
    Dramatic advances in nanomaterials synthesis and characterization provide promising possibilities for biomedical applications. Consequently, there is a growing demand for well- characterized, low cost toxicity assays for the validation of nanomaterials. Hence, we propose the use of the fruit fly, Drosophila, as a cost-effective model organism for the validation of novel nanomaterials. We conducted a product-specific science-based nanomaterial assessment using nanomaterial for biomedical applications at concentrations with practical relevance and at predicted environmental concentrations (PEC). We tested 8 nanomaterials at different concentrations: single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWCNT) and multi-wall carbon nanotubes (MWCNT); silver, gold, and titanium dioxide nanoparticles; and iron oxide (IO) nanoparticles (a) synthesized by co-precipitation coated with aminopropylsilane (APS) (Cop-IO-APS-Alexa- Biotin), (b) synthesized by co-precipitation coated with APS and carboxymethyldextran (CMDx) (Cop-IO-APS-CMDx), and (c) synthesized by thermo-decomposition coated with CMDx (Thermo-IO-CMDx). Our assessment allows us to test two different interaction routes; (1) direct microtransfer of nanomaterials into target tissues, and (2) direct contact-exposure in the developing embryo. The direct micro transfer route is based on simple developmental morphological milestones in Drosophila allowing for overall mortality quantification and identification of specific stage of mortality. The smallest concentrations were calculated based on PEC in water. In every case except for MWCNT these initial treatments presented no statistically relevant increase in toxic effect when compared to the control. The direct contact- exposure route serves as an assessment of nanomaterial transport across biological membranes. The results yielded are expected to lead to improvements in the design of nanostructures, the establishment of standardized regulations for characterization, handling and disposal of nanomaterials, and maximum allowable concentrations (MAC) in the environment. Furthermore, our cost-effective assessment has possibility of being conducted as a high-throughput screening methodology of nanomaterials amenable at every stage of R & D, and could be further developed to establish more specific molecular interactions.