high throughput comet assay to study genotoxicity of nanomaterials

The unique physicochemical properties of engineered nanomaterials (NMs) have accelerated their use in diverse industrial and domestic products. Although their presence in consumer products represents a major concern for public health safety, their potential impact on human health is poorly understood. There is therefore an urgent need to clarify the toxic effects of NMs and to elucidate the mechanisms involved. In view of the large number of NMs currently being used, high throughput (HTP) screening technologies are clearly needed for efficient assessment of toxicity. The comet assay is the most used method in nanogenotoxicity studies and has great potential for increasing throughput as it is fast, versatile and robust; simple technical modifications of the assay make it possible to test many compounds (NMs) in a single experiment. The standard gel of 70-100 μL contains thousands of cells, of which only a tiny fraction are actually scored. Reducing the gel to a volume of 5 μL, with just a few hundred cells, allows twelve gels to be set on a standard slide, or 96 as a standard 8x12 array. For the 12 gel format, standard slides precoated with agarose are placed on a metal template and gels are set on the positions marked on the template. The HTP comet assay, incorporating digestion of DNA with formamidopyrimidine DNA glycosylase (FPG) to detect oxidised purines, has recently been applied to study the potential induction of genotoxicity by NMs via reactive oxygen. In the NanoTEST project we investigated the genotoxic potential of several well-characterized metal and polymeric nanoparticles with the comet assay. All in vitro studies were harmonized; i.e. NMs were from the same batch, and identical dispersion protocols, exposure time, concentration range, culture conditions, and time-courses were used. As a kidney model, Cos-1 fibroblast-like kidney cells were treated with different concentrations of iron oxide NMs, and cells embedded in minigels (12 per slide). Subsequent incubation with FPG revealed damage not seen with the basic assay for strand breaks (without FPG) (Harris et al., 2015). Statistical evaluation showed that oleic acid coated Fe3O4 and TiO2 NMs are genotoxic, in the experimental conditions used. No differences were seen between cell lines representing a range of different tissues – demonstrating the general usefulness of in vitro models and the ability of cells to classify NMs as genotoxic and non-genotoxic (Cowie et al., 2015). We are currently studying the effects of 20 NMs in the NANoREG project using A549, BEAS B2 and TK6 cells - again demonstrating the usefulness of the HTP comet assay for nanogenotoxicity testing.