Embryotoxicity of cobalt ferrite and gold nanoparticles: A first in vitro approach

Nanoparticles (NPs) are emerging as promising biomedical tools thanks to their peculiar characteristics. Our purpose was to investigate the embryotoxicity of cobalt ferrite and gold NPs through the Embryonic Stem Cell Test (EST). The EST is an in vitro standard assay, which permits to classify substances as strongly, weakly or non-embryotoxic. Due to the particular physical–chemical nature of nanoparticles, we introduced a modification to the standard protocol exposing the Embryonic Stem Cells (ES-D3) to nanoparticles only during the first 5 days of the assay. Moreover, we proposed a method to discriminate and compare the embryotoxicity of the substances within the weakly embryotoxic range. Our ID50 results permit to classify cobalt ferrite nanoparticles coated with gold and silanes as non-embryotoxic. The remaining nanoparticles have been classified as weakly embryotoxic in this decreasing order: gold salt (HAuCl4·3H2O) > cobalt ferrite salt (CoFe2O4) > cobalt ferrite nanoparticles coated with silanes (Si–CoFe) > gold nanoparticles coated with hyaluronic acid (HA–Au).