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Cross-Species Comparisons of Nanoparticle Interactions with Innate Immune Systems: A Methodological Review

Nanomaterials 2021 21 citations ? Citation count from OpenAlex, updated daily. May differ slightly from the publisher's own count. Score: 45 ? 0–100 AI score estimating relevance to the microplastics field. Papers below 30 are filtered from public browse.
Benjamin J. Swartzwelter, Craig Mayall, Andi Alijagić, Francesco Barbero, Eleonora Ferrari, Szabolcs Hernádi, Sara Michelini, Natividad Isabel Navarro Pacheco, Alessandra Prinelli, Elmer Swart, Manon Auguste

Summary

This methodological review compares nanoparticle interactions with innate immune systems across species from plants to humans, identifying conserved immune pathways that can serve as cross-species models for evaluating nanoparticle and nanoplastic toxicity.

Body Systems

Many components of the innate immune system are evolutionarily conserved and shared across many living organisms, from plants and invertebrates to humans. Therefore, these shared features can allow the comparative study of potentially dangerous substances, such as engineered nanoparticles (NPs). However, differences of methodology and procedure between diverse species and models make comparison of innate immune responses to NPs between organisms difficult in many cases. To this aim, this review provides an overview of suitable methods and assays that can be used to measure NP immune interactions across species in a multidisciplinary approach. The first part of this review describes the main innate immune defense characteristics of the selected models that can be associated to NPs exposure. In the second part, the different modes of exposure to NPs across models (considering isolated cells or whole organisms) and the main endpoints measured are discussed. In this synergistic perspective, we provide an overview of the current state of important cross-disciplinary immunological models to study NP-immune interactions and identify future research needs. As such, this paper could be used as a methodological reference point for future nano-immunosafety studies.

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