Possible Reductive Ability of Mxenes With Cultured Cells

Roshchupkin A.*, Husak Ye.*,***, Yanko I.*, Ekpe Onyinyechi Peace*, Balitskyi V.**, Burduli D.**, Baginskyi I.**, Zahorodna V.** , Maksym Pogorielov*, Oleksiy Gogotsi**, Sergiy Kyrylenko*
*Medical Institute of Sumy State University, Sumy, Ukraine
**
Materials Research Center, Carbon-Ukraine (Y-Carbon ltd.), Kyiv, Ukraine

***Silesian University of Technology, Gliwice, Poland

 

Toufik’s Medical Journal
Volume 1, Supplement 1, November 2021
Abstract from Biomedical Perspectives III 

Introduction: MXenes is a unique class of layered-structured metallic materials with attractive features and wide applications in many fields. Determination of their cytotoxicity and biocompatibility in cell cultures is the first step to make use of MXenes in living systems. Consequently, evaluation of cell viability is needed to investigate any possible influence of MXenes in cells and tissues. A resazurin reduction assay offers a simple, rapid and sensitive solution for measurement for the viability of both mammalian cells and bacteria. Living cells can reduce the nonfluorescent dye resazurin to the strongly fluorescent resorufin. The output of the reaction is proportional to the number of viable cells over a wide concentration range. However, it was shown that MXenes can have reductive capacity by themselves. Therefore, its influence on resazurin reduction assay and consequently measurement of cell viability is possible.

Aim: We aimed at investigating possible autocatalytic reductive capacity of MXenes on resazurin without influence of living cells.

Materials and methods: Two MXene preparations from two different sourses were employed. A wide range of concentrations were used. MXenes were mixed with resazurin in cell culture medium and incubated in a cell culture incubator for various times.

Results: We observed weak reduction of resazurin after 24 hours of incubation. After 5 days of incubation we detected clear reduction of resazurin by MXenes. The degree of this reduction however was far lower than in experiments with the cells. Conclusions: We hypothesized that reduction of resazurin in the presence of living cells is brought about by certain intracellular enzymes, released into the medium after cell death. We currently investigate a possible mechanism of this effect. We suggest that the results of the cell metabolic assays should be interpreted with care due to possible autocatalytic reduction of resazurin with MXenes.

Acknowledgements: Supported by the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine (0120U101972); H2020 MC Actions (NanoSurf 777926, CanBioSe 778157, NANO2DAY 77810, SALSETH 872370); National Research Fund of Ukraine (2020.02/0223); Erasmus+ JM project 599989-EPP-1-2018-1-UA-EPPJMO-MODULE.