Speaker
Prof.
Yuri Volkov
(Trinity College Dublin, Ireland)
Description
Rapid development of nanotechnology consistently increases
the likelihood of human contact with environmentally
presented and manufactured nanomaterials, i.e. the tiny
objects ranging in size from one to several hundreds of
nanometres and featuring an extreme diversity in shapes and
physico-chemical properties. However, there is still very
little definitive systematic information about the
consequences of interactions of nano-scale objects with
human cells of diverse origin and therefore safety-related
issues are high on the agenda in the emerging scientific
area of nanomedicine. On the other hand, optimistic
expectations are associated with the opportunities of using
the nanoparticles as a new class of drug delivery systems,
arising from the fact that the finite, but tunable size of
the engineered nanostructures used as drug delivery vehicles
can impose very precise nano-scale drug distribution
barriers at the level of cells, tissues and entire organism
thereby eliminating undesirable side effects pertinent to
most contemporary medicines. High content imaging and
analysis (HCA) approach provides a unique integrated
technological toolkit for visualization and physical
characterization of nanoparticle-cell interactions. An
exceptional aspect of this approach is that it is possible
to identify individual cell, as well as population responses
associated with nanoparticle exposure, as in this way subtle
effects on small groups of cells within the whole, which
could be averaged out by only screening the whole set, are
fully registered and elucidated. We provide here an overview
of HCA application scenarios for screening the safety and
intracellular distribution of nanomaterials with promising
biomedical application potential.
Supported by the Health Research Board of Ireland, Science
Foundation of Ireland SRC BioNanoInteract and EU FP-6
Consortium NanoInteract.
Primary author
Prof.
Yuri Volkov
(Trinity College Dublin, Ireland)
