Impedance Based Nanotoxicity Assessment of Graphene Nanomaterials at the Cellular and Tissue Level

Abstract

The interest in graphene for biomedical applications has grown substantially in the past few years creating a need for biocompatibility testing. Biomedical engineering applications using graphene such as biosensing devices, microbial detection, disease diagnosis, and drug delivery systems are progressing rapidly, perhaps overlooking any possible hazards as graphene nanomaterials may interact with biological materials differently than other graphitic materials such as carbon nanotubes and fullerenes. As a potential application for graphene is drug delivery, the toxicity of graphene was tested against an in vitro model of the blood brain barrier (BBB) by measuring trans-endothelial-electrical resistance (TEER). A new approach in terms of electrical impedance sensing was also utilized to kinetically analyze the cytotoxicity of graphene nanomaterials towards the BBB model's individual components, rat astrocytes (CRL-2006) and mouse endothelial cells (CRL-2583), in real time by measuring the impedimetric response. Graphene showed little or no toxicity toward both individual cell types as the resistance measurements were similar to those of the control and further, graphene did not interrupt the integrity of the BBB model as a whole showing the biocompatibility of graphene and the broad potential of using these new nanomaterials for biomedical applications.

Keywords:

• Blood brain barrier
• Electrical impedance biosensor
• Graphene
• Nanotoxicity

Acknowledgments

This paper was submitted as part of a Special Issue on Biosensors organized by Dr. Yu Lei of the University of Connecticut.

We thank AMERI (Advanced Material Engineering Research Institute, FIU) and Biosensor USA Corp for technical and financial support. This research and development project was conducted by National Center for Telehealth & Technology and is made possible by a research grant that was awarded and administered by the U.S. Army Medical Research & Materiel Command (USAMRMC) and the Telemedicine & Advanced Technology Research Center (TATRC), at Fort Detrick, MD, under Contract Number: W81XWH-10-1-0732. This work has been also partially supported by the grant of NSF 1036579 and Wallace H. Coulter New Inventor Award.