Abstract The rapid development and production of nanomaterials has created some concerns about their potential hazard on the environment, human health and safety. However, since the list of materials that may gen- era...Abstract The rapid development and production of nanomaterials has created some concerns about their potential hazard on the environment, human health and safety. However, since the list of materials that may gen- erate such concerns is very long, it is impossible to test them all. It is therefore usually recommended to use some small compositional nanomaterial libraries to perform ini- tial toxicity screening, based on which combinatorial libraries are then introduced for more in-depth studies. All nanomaterials in the compositional and combinatorial libraries must be rigorously characterized before any bio- logical studies. In this review, several major categories of physicochemical properties that must be characterized are discussed, along with different analytical techniques that are commonly used. Some case studies from the University of California Center for Environmental Implications of Nanotechnology are also chosen to demonstrate the effec- tive use of compositional and combinatorial nanomaterials libraries to identify the role of some key physicochemical properties and to establish true quantitative structure-ac- tivity relationships. Examples on how to use the knowledge generated from those studies to design safer nanomaterials for improved biological applications are also presented.展开更多
基金supported by the National Science Foundation and the Environmental Protection Agency to UCCEIN under Cooperative Agreement No. DBI-1266377Partial support was also provided by U.S. Public Health Service Grants (R01 ES016746 and U19 ES019528)
文摘Abstract The rapid development and production of nanomaterials has created some concerns about their potential hazard on the environment, human health and safety. However, since the list of materials that may gen- erate such concerns is very long, it is impossible to test them all. It is therefore usually recommended to use some small compositional nanomaterial libraries to perform ini- tial toxicity screening, based on which combinatorial libraries are then introduced for more in-depth studies. All nanomaterials in the compositional and combinatorial libraries must be rigorously characterized before any bio- logical studies. In this review, several major categories of physicochemical properties that must be characterized are discussed, along with different analytical techniques that are commonly used. Some case studies from the University of California Center for Environmental Implications of Nanotechnology are also chosen to demonstrate the effec- tive use of compositional and combinatorial nanomaterials libraries to identify the role of some key physicochemical properties and to establish true quantitative structure-ac- tivity relationships. Examples on how to use the knowledge generated from those studies to design safer nanomaterials for improved biological applications are also presented.
