Shedding light onto the dark sides of nanotechnology: nanoparticle dosimetry and bio-interactions (Opening Lecture)
Wolfgang G Kreyling
(Helmholtz Zentrum München, Germany)
Abstract
Shedding light onto the dark sides of nanotechnology: nanoparticle dosimetry and bio-interactions
While engineered nanoparticles (ENP) are considered to be an enabling technology for future developments of many fields of science, technology and medicine, their fate once incorporated into the organism and their potential hazard to the host still raises numerous open questions. Entering the respiratory tract during inhalation or via the gastro-intestinal tract by ingestion or the blood circulation by medical treatments they may only be eliminated out of the body to a certain extend while the remaining ENP will either be retained in the organ of intake or ENP may be able to cross organ and cellular membranes, thus, distributing into secondary organs and tissues within the entire organism. This so-called translocation has not been observed for larger particles. Hence, adverse health effects caused by ENM may or may not occur in those secondary organs and tissues (including cardio-vascular system, immune system, central nervous system, reproductive system, etc.).
The biokinetics of ENM within the organism depends strongly on (a) physico-chemical ENM properties (e.g. size, shape and size distribution, chemical composition of the ENM core and surface, surface charge, etc.), (b) their route of entry into the body and (c) their interactive reactivity with biomolecules and proteins in body and cellular fluids, and/or with membrane receptors and intracellular compartments. Thereby organ and tissue doses will be modulated and finally hazardness will be mediated.
Based on five different, classical ENM made of either metals or metaloxide or carbon (gold, silver, iridium, titanium dioxide, elemental carbon) their biokinetics and hazard will be discussed including the question whether the current knowledge allows sufficiently precise prediction of the potential hazardness of newly emerging ENM.
