Nanomaterials are widely used in industrial and clinical settings due to their unique physical and chemical properties. However, public health and environmental concerns have emerged owing to their undesired toxicity and ability to trigger immune responses. This paper presents the development of a microfluidic-based cell biochip device that enables the administration of nanoparticles under laminar flow to cells of the immune system to assess their cytotoxicity. The exposure of human B lymphocytes to 10 nm silver nanoparticles under fluid flow led to a 3-fold increase in toxicity compared to static conditions, possibly indicating enhanced cell–nanoparticle interactions. To investigate whether the administration under flow was the main contributing factor, we compared and validated the cytotoxicity of the same nanoparticles in different platforms, including the conventional well plate format and in-house fabricated microfluidic devices under both static and dynamic flow conditions. Our results suggest that commonly employed static platforms might not be well-suited to perform toxicological screening of nanomaterials and may lead to an underestimation of cytotoxic responses. The simplicity of the developed flow system makes this setup a valuable tool to preliminary screen nanomaterials.

中文翻译：

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片上风险评估：用于免疫毒性筛查的基于细胞的微流控装置

纳米材料因其独特的物理和化学性质而广泛用于工业和临床环境中。然而，由于它们不希望有的毒性和触发免疫反应的能力，已经出现了公共卫生和环境问题。本文介绍了一种基于微流体的细胞生物芯片装置的开发，该装置能够在层流下将纳米颗粒施用于免疫系统的细胞，以评估它们的细胞毒性。与静态条件相比，人类 B 淋巴细胞在流体流动下暴露于 10 nm 银纳米颗粒导致毒性增加 3 倍，这可能表明细胞-纳米颗粒相互作用增强。为了研究流动给药是否是主要影响因素，我们比较并验证了相同纳米颗粒在不同平台上的细胞毒性，包括在静态和动态流动条件下的传统孔板格式和内部制造的微流体装置。我们的结果表明，常用的静态平台可能不适合对纳米材料进行毒理学筛选，并可能导致低估细胞毒性反应。开发的流动系统的简单性使该设置成为初步筛选纳米材料的宝贵工具。