An in vitro study on the interaction of hydroxyapatite nanoparticles and bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells for assessing the toxicological behaviour

Mesenchymal stem cells or multipotent progenitor cells isolated from bone marrow presents close resemblance to the natural in vivo milieu and hence preferred more than the conventional cell culture systems to predict the toxicological behavior of bio-nano interaction. The objective of the present study is to evaluate the molecular toxicity of hydroxyapatite nanoparticles (HANPs) using mouse bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs). In-house synthesized HANPs (50 nm) were used to study the cytotoxicity, nano particle uptake, effect on cyto skeletal arrangement, oxidative stress response and apoptotic behavior with the confluent BMSCs as per standard protocols. The results of the MTT assay indicated that HANPs does not induce cytotoxicity up to 800 μg/mL. It was also observed that oxidative stress related apoptosis and reactive oxygen species (ROS) production following nanoparticle treatment was similar to that of control (cells without treatment). Hence it can be concluded that the in-house synthesized HANPs are non-toxic/safe at the molecular level suggesting that the HANPs are compatible to BMSCs. Further, the in vitro BMSCs cell culture can be used as a model for evaluating the preliminary toxicity of nanomaterials.