Nanosafety Screening using Immune Cells from a Sentinel Species

This Study will test the feasibility of developing a novel cell-based assay product for use in nanosafety testing. The assay will be built using haemocyte cells of the marine mussel Mytilus, a sentinel species exquisitely sensitive to the presence of environmental pollutants. Haemocytes are readily isolated in large numbers, and can be stored frozen as suspension cultures. These cells possess the biochemical features of cell-mediated immunity, so offering a unique opportunity to screen environmental samples for nanotoxic contaminants. The study aims to incorporate these attractive features into a robust cell-based assay capable of medium-throughput screening, which can become a user-friendly, standardisable analysis tool. If successful, the assay product is likely to find widespread commercial application in the testing, under laboratory or field conditions, of workplace or environmental samples for nanosafety risk.