The objective of this study was to achieve the practical bioapplications of silicon nanowires (SiNWs). In this study, the tumor and normal cell lines were used as models to systematically investigate the cytotoxicity of SiNWs synthesized by HF-assisted etching methods. Morphology observation, Cell Counting Kit 8, real-time polymerase chain reaction, and flow cytometry analysis were used to elucidate the cytotoxicity of SiNWs. The results showed that the cytotoxicity of SiNWs is greatly dependent on cell lines, SiNWs concentration, and incubation time. Particularly, SiNWs show better biocompatibility with tumor cell lines (eg, human epithelial cervical cancer [Hela] cells and human hepatocellular liver carcinoma [HepG2] cells) than normal cell lines (eg, human normal liver [HL-7702] cells and human embryonic kidney [HEK293T] cells). The reasons may be that SiNWs could tightly attach to the cell membrane in the cell medium, which obviously affects cell adhesion and inhibits their cell viability, especially for normal cell lines. From systematical analysis and comparison, we obtain the concentration limits of SiNWs, which may advance SiNWs applications and its toxicological study in vitro.

中文翻译：

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硅纳米线的细胞毒性研究。

这项研究的目的是实现硅纳米线（SiNWs）的实际生物应用。在这项研究中，以肿瘤细胞和正常细胞系为模型，系统地研究了通过HF辅助蚀刻方法合成的SiNW的细胞毒性。使用形态学观察，Cell Counting Kit 8，实时聚合酶链反应和流式细胞仪分析来阐明SiNW的细胞毒性。结果表明，SiNWs的细胞毒性在很大程度上取决于细胞系，SiNWs浓度和孵育时间。尤其是，SiNW与肿瘤细胞系（例如人上皮宫颈癌[Hela]细胞和人肝细胞肝癌[HepG2]细胞）相比，具有比正常细胞系（例如人正常肝[HL-7702]细胞和人胚胎）更好的生物相容性肾脏[HEK293T]细胞）。原因可能是SiNW可以紧密附着在细胞培养基中的细胞膜上，这显然会影响细胞粘附并抑制其细胞活力，特别是对于正常细胞系。通过系统的分析和比较，我们确定了SiNWs的浓度极限，这可能会促进SiNWs的应用及其体外毒理学研究。