Microscopy study on the interaction of silica nanoparticles with lung epithelial cells

The lung is one of the main target organs of nanoparticle exposure and the particles interact with lung cells depending on their physicochemical properties. Knowledge about nanoparticle uptake and intercellular fate is of great interest for the biomedical as well as toxicological field. As both, nanoparticles and cellular structures are in the nanometer size-range, high-resolution microscopy techniques are needed to study particle-cell interactions in vitro. Therefore, we investigated the interaction of silica nanoparticles with A549 cells as model for human type II alveolar epithelial cells (A549) using stimula…