Immunology

Biography

Biography: Lucia Gemma Delogu

Abstract

Graphene oxide (GO) is gaining the interest of the scientific community for its revolutionary future applications i.e. for drug delivery [Geim AK et al. Nature Materials 2007]. In this context, the possible immune cell impact of GO is a fundamental area of study for a translational application in medicine [Goldberg MS, Cell 2015; Orecchioni M. et al. JTM 2014]. We focused on the effects, on human lymphomonocytes (PBMCs), of two types of GOs, deeply characterized, which differed in lateral size dimension (GO-Small: 140nm, and GO-Large 4m). To clarify the immune impact of GOs we provided a wide range of assays looking at cells viability, cell activation, cytokines release and gene expression. We let in lights also the impact of GOs on immune response-related 84 genes. GOs didn’t impact the cell viability. In particular, the GO-Small modulated 16 genes (FR >4) compared to only 5 of GO-Large, evidencing a clear lateral dimension-dependent impact on cell activation. We confirmed the size-related effect at the protein level by multiplex ELISA. These evidences were also confirmed by microarray analysis on T and monocytes cell lines. GO-Small impact the immune cell activation, underlined by the over expression of genes such as CXCL10 ligand pathway and CXCR3 receptor. Data also evidenced the GO-Small-induced methabolism modulation in both cell types. Our work represents a comprehensive characterization of different sized GOs on immune cells giving crucial information for the chemical and physical design of graphene for biomedical applications i.e. as a new possible drug delivery systems and nanoimmunotherapy tools.