Organic Electrochemical Transistors for Real-Time Monitoring of In Vitro Silver Nanoparticle Toxicity

Nanomaterials are being widely used in medical applications and consumer products such as cosmetics, fabrics, and food packaging, although their impact on health and the environment is yet to be understood. Strategies enabling reliable and reproducible safety assessment of nanomaterials are needed because predicting their toxic effects is challenging as there is no simple correlation between their properties and the interaction with living systems. Here, the real-time monitoring of toxic effects induced by nanoparticles on cells using organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs) is reported. Noteworthy, OECTs are able to assess the coating-dependent toxicity of nanoparticles on both barrier and non-barrier tissue cells and, moreover, to monitor the cell health status as a function of exposure time, allowing useful insight on the interaction processes between nanomaterials and cells. These results demonstrate that OECTs are effective devices for real-time cell monitoring and in vitro assessment of nanomaterial toxicity.