Experimental Design and Predictive Computational Modeling for the Toxicity of Nanomaterials on the Human Epidermal Cells

Nanomaterials are becoming more commonly used in everyday life, where human beings are becoming exposed to such materials. However, the toxicity of the materials being introduced in our environment is not fully studied. We are currently working on a pilot project to develop computation models that can predict the toxicity of nanomaterials on cell types based on empirical data obtained through monoculture experiments and co-culture experiments. Our hypothesis is that computational approach can be utilized to predict the toxicity and model the intercellular interactions in co-culture studies. The uniqueness of this approach is that we propose to employ computational methods to predict the outcome of co-culture experiments and test the validity of the predictions with cellular biology assays results from co-culture experiments. Human skin cell types such as keratinocytes, melanocytes and dendritic cell lines will be used to mimic the cellular elements of the epidermis. Cytoxicity, genotoxicity and lipid peroxidation assays will be used to measure cytoplasmic, DNA, and lipid membrane damage respectively. The expected results are that the computational approach will use the results from monoculture experiments to generate a preliminary model that will predict the outcome of co-culture experiments. The preliminary model will be further trained using the co-culture experiments conducted to validate the predicted results.