Comparative cytotoxicity studies of carbon-encapsulated iron nanoparticles in murine glioma cells

Carbon-encapsulated iron nanoparticles (CEINs) have recently emerged as a new class of magnetic nanomaterials with a great potential for an increasing number of biomedical applications. To address the current deficient knowledge of cellular responses due to CEIN exposures, we focused on the investigation of internalization profile and resulting cytotoxic effects of CEINs (0.0001–100 μg/ml) in murine glioma cells (GL261) in vitro. The studied CEIN samples were characterized (TEM, FT-IR, Zeta potential, Boehm titration) and examined as raw and purified nanomaterials with various surface chemistry composition. Of the four type CEINs (the mean diameter 47–56 nm) studied here, the as-synthesized raw nanoparticles (Fe@C/Fe) exhibited high cytotoxic effects on the plasma cell membrane (LDH, Calcein AM/PI) and mitochondria (MTT, JC-1) causing some pro-apoptotic evens (Annexin V/PI) in glioma cells. The effects of the purified (Fe@C) and surface-modified (Fe@C-COOH and Fe@C-(CH2)2COOH) CEINs were found in quite similar patterns; however, most of these cytotoxic events were slightly diminished compared to those induced by Fe@C/Fe. The study showed that the surface-functionalized CEINs affected the cell cycle progression in both S and G2/M phases to a greater extent compared to that of the rest of nanoparticles studied to data. Taken all together, the present results highlight the importance of the rational design of CEINs as their physicochemical features such as morphology, hydrodynamic size, impurity profiles, and especially surface characteristics are critical determinants of different cytotoxic responses.