Genotoxicity study of human astrocytes exposed to oleic acid-coated iron oxide nanoparticles

Iron oxide nanoparticles (ION) have attracted much attention in last decade for their utility in several biomedical applications such as magnetic resonance imaging, hyperthermia-based cancer therapy, and targeted drug/gene delivery. Particularly, previous works showed that ION can cross the blood-brain barrier, making them especially useful as diagnostic and therapeutic tools, specifically in central nervous system diseases (reviewed in Kiliç et al., 2017). Although oleic acid-coated ION (O-ION) show in general good stability and biocompatibility, toxicological studies about their effect in human nervous cells are scant so far. Neurotoxicity assessment is therefore crucial to establish safety conditions for O-ION biomedical uses. Hence, the main objective of this work was to assess the potential genotoxic damage induced on human glial cells (A172 astrocytes) by exposure to O-ION.Xunta de Galicia (ED431B 2019/02), Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte (BEAGAL18/00142 to V.), Deputación Provincial de A Coruña (to N.F.-B.), and FCT (subsidized by national fund of MCTES, SFRH/BD/101060/2014 [to F.B.]). Authors would also like to acknowledge COST Action CA15132 “The comet assay as a human biomonitoring tool (hCOMET)”.N/