Figure 1

Impact of stretch and nanoparticle treatment on cell viability and cytotoxicity and the expression of pro-inflammatory mediators. HUVEC were seeded on flexible membranes and treated with sicastar-redF 30 nm-plain (60 μg/ml) or various 70 nm (150 μg/ml) sicastar-redF nanoparticles for 24 hours. (A) The MTS-Assay was used to determine cell viability and the acquired data were normalized to the untreated static control. (B) Cytotoxicity was determined by LDH-assay and data were normalized to static lysis. (C) Secretion of Interleukin- (IL-) 8 was investigated by ELISA. LPS-stimulated cells were used as positive control. (D) Soluble vascular cell adhesion molecule (sVCAM) was determined by ELISA, while the secretion of sVCAM after LPS treatment was used as positive control. Results shown are means ± SD calculated using the results of at least three independent experiments. For cell viability: *: P <0.05, **: P <0.01 compared to the appropriate untreated control (ONEway ANOVA with Dunnetts t-test); for IL-8 secretion: ***: P <0.001 (TWOway ANOVA with Bonferroni post-test).