Professor Qing Huang, Laboratory of Physical Biology, Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China

The Bioeffect of Nanomaterials

Nanomaterials have raised great attention because of their superior physical and chemical properties and wide utilization in biological and biomedical studies. More recently, there have been intense concerns on cytotoxicity assessment of these nanomaterials. Here, I’ll give several examples to show how these nanomaterials could interact with living systems and the biological mechanism of these bio-effect. Firstly, I’ll summarize recent progress on mechanistic studies of cytotoxicity of II-IV QDs. We found cytotoxicity of CdTe QDs not only comes from the release of Cd2+ ions but also from its intracellular distribution. Secondly, I’ll introduce the antibacterial activity of GO, which was firstly observed in our group. After that, the bio-application of a new nanomaterials, DNA nanostructure, will also be discussed.