A cellular level biocompatibility and biosafety evaluation of mesoporous SiO2-based nanocomposite with lanthanum species

The risk assessment of SiO2 nanoparticles has attracted extensive attention due to their great potential for various commercial purposes. However, the toxicity of mesoporous SiO2-based nanocomposite is still unclear. Herein SiO2-based hexagonal mesoporous nanosphere doping La3+ ions with diameter of 40-50 nm (SLa-HMS) and micronsized SiO2-based hexagonal mesoporous solid inlaid with nanowires, 80-250 nm in length and 4-5 nm in diameter, of La species (WLa-HMS) were synthesized via self-assembly method. The specimens were characterized by small angle XRD, TEM, EDS, FT-IR, and N-2 ad-desorption. HeLa, fibroblast, and HBMSC cells were exposed to 0.1-100 mu g/mL of SLa-HMS and WLa-HMS colloids for 12, 24, 48, and 72 h. Our data demonstrated that exposure of SLa-HMS in the dose range tested had no hazardous effect on all three cell lines, which was greatly different from previous reports. However, the WLa-HMS with average particle size of 10-19 mu m was proven to be very toxic to the growth of all three cell lines. These interesting findings strongly suggest that doping heteroatom could be a way to improve the cytotoxicity of nanomaterials, as well as to oncotherapy on the basis of the hazardous effect of nanomaterials.