A pilot toxicology study of single-walled carbon nanotubes in a small sample of mice
A pilot toxicology study of single-walled carbon nanotubes in a small sample of mice
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DOI：
10.1038/nnano.2008.68
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发表时间：
2008-04-01
影响因子：
38.3
通讯作者：
Gambhir, Sanjiv S.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Schipper, Meike L.;Nakayama-Ratchford, Nozomi;Gambhir, Sanjiv S.
单壁碳纳米管目前正在生物医学应用的评估中，包括药物(4)、蛋白质、肽（5-7）和核酸（8,9）（用于基因转移（10）或基因沉默（11））的体内递送（1-3）、体内肿瘤成像（12）和单壁碳纳米管作为抗肿瘤治疗的肿瘤靶向5。然而，对单壁碳纳米管的潜在毒性的担忧已经提出（13,14）。在这里，我们研究了功能化单壁碳纳米管注射到小鼠血液中时的急性和慢性毒性。生存、临床和实验室参数显示4个月以上无毒性证据。在杀死后，仔细的尸检和组织组织学只显示与年龄有关的变化。组织学和拉曼显微图谱表明，功能化的单壁碳纳米管在肝脏和脾脏巨噬细胞中持续存在4个月而没有明显的毒性。虽然这是一项针对一小群动物的初步研究，但我们的结果鼓励在更大的动物群体中进行进一步的确认研究。
Single-walled carbon nanotubes are currently under evaluation in biomedical applications, including in vivo delivery(1-3) of drugs(4), proteins, peptides(5-7) and nucleic acids(8,9) ( for gene transfer(10) or gene silencing(11)), in vivo tumour imaging(12) and tumour targeting of single-walled carbon nanotubes as an anti-neoplastic treatment5. However, concerns about the potential toxicity of single-walled carbon nanotubes have been raised(13,14). Here we examine the acute and chronic toxicity of functionalized single-walled carbon nanotubes when injected into the bloodstream of mice. Survival, clinical and laboratory parameters reveal no evidence of toxicity over 4 months. Upon killing, careful necropsy and tissue histology show age-related changes only. Histology and Raman microscopic mapping demonstrate that functionalized single-walled carbon nanotubes persisted within liver and spleen macrophages for 4 months without apparent toxicity. Although this is a preliminary study with a small group of animals, our results encourage further confirmation studies with larger groups of animals.