The safety of nanomaterials, made from natural or artificial substances, used in food, various industrial processes, medicine, and other areas, represents a significant challenge because nanotechnology, as a young and up-and-coming field, is developing very quickly, while nanotoxicology and nanoecotoxicology are falling behind. That is why we do not find much information on the risk assessment of nanomaterials in the literature. Still, since the production, use, and ultimately the exposure of people to nanomaterials is increasing significantly, the acquisition of data on potential acute and chronic toxicity plays an even more critical role.
Nanoencapsulation carriers are used in many areas to increase the stability and shelf life of the bioactive agent and improve the control of its delivery and release. In the food industry, we often use natural polysaccharides like alginate, whose nanoparticles are among the most characterized biomaterials for target-specific delivery of bioactive agents.
In the master's thesis, we tested the cytotoxicity and genotoxicity of seven different types of alginate-based nanocapsules as potential carriers of bioactive agents on human hepatocellular carcinoma cell line, HepG2. Three of the seven different types of nanocapsules contained quercetin as an example of a bioactive agent. Cytotoxicity was evaluated using a colorimetric method for determining cell proliferation and viability, while genotoxicity was assessed using a comet assay for detecting DNA damage at the single cell level. If we want to use nanocapsules in the food industry, the latter must not exhibit toxic activity. The results of our master's thesis showed that the tested nanocapsules are not cytotoxic in the concentration range up to 500 µg/mL for HepG2 cells after 24 hours of exposure. We also found that the tested nanocapsules did not cause DNA damage in HepG2 cells after 4- and 24-hour exposure and therefore had no genotoxic effect in the test system studied at applied conditions.
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