Fig. 7
Functionality, integrity and intracellular ROS levels of cells exposed in submerged conditions in inserts. Co-cultures (A549 + THP-1) were exposed in inserts for 3 h to suspensions of TiO2 (NM105, NM101, NM100) and CeO2 (NM212), to achieve deposited doses of around 1, 3 and 10 μg/cm2. Suspensions were then replaced by fresh medium and cells were kept for 21 h at the incubator with NMs deposited on their surface. At 24 h, Alamar blue® and LDH assays were performed to assess functionality and integrity of the cells, respectively. A DCF assay was performed to measure intracellular ROS levels and H2O2 (1 mM) was used as positive control for the assay (not shown on the graph). Data represent the mean ± SD of three independent experiments. A Kruskal-Wallis test followed by Dunn’s post-hoc test were performed to compare treated groups to controls (*p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001)