Cupric Oxide Nanoparticles Induce Cellular Toxicity in Liver and Intestine Cell Lines

The wide application of cupric oxide nanoparticles (copper (II) oxide, CuO-NPs) in various fields has increased exposure to the kind of active nanomaterials, which can cause negative effects on human and environment health. Although CuO-NPs were reported to be harmful to human, there is still a lack information related to their toxic potentials. In the present study, the toxic potentials of CuO-NPs were evaluated in the liver (HepG2 hepatocarcinoma) and intestine (Caco-2 colorectal adenocarcinoma) cells.

After the characterization of particles, cellular uptake and morphological changes were determined. The potential of cytotoxic, genotoxic, oxidative and apoptotic damage was investigated with several in vitro assays.

The average size of the nanoparticles was 34.9 nm, about 2%-5% of the exposure dose was detected in the cells and mainly accumulated in different organelles, causing oxidative stress, cell damages, and death. The IC50 values were 10.90 and 10.04 µg/mL by MTT assay, and 12.19 and 12.06 µg/mL by neutral red uptake (NRU) assay, in HepG2 and Caco-2 cells respectively. Apoptosis assumes to the main cell death pathway; the apoptosis percentages were 52.9% in HepG2 and 45.5% in Caco-2 cells. Comet assay result shows that the highest exposure concentration (20 µg/mL) causes tail intensities about 9.6 and 41.8%, in HepG2 and Caco-2 cells, respectively.

CuO-NPs were found to cause significant cytotoxicity, genotoxicity, and oxidative and apoptotic effects in both cell lines. Indeed, CuO-NPs could be dangerous to human health even if their toxic mechanisms should be elucidated with further studies.