How physico-chemical characteristics of nanoparticles cause their toxicity: complex and unresolved interrelations

The increased use of and interest in nanoparticles (NPs) have resulted in an enormous amount of NPs with different compositions and physico-chemical properties. These unique properties not only determine their utility for (bio-medical) applications, but also their toxicity. Recently, “nano-researchers” became aware of the importance of determining the characteristics since they might be predictors of their toxicity. Currently, we face a large set of (non-coordinated) experiments with miscellaneous objectives resulting in a large quantity of available (and often incomplete) data, which hamper the unraveling of the complex interrelated NP characteristics with experimental results. Here, we try to link different critical physico-chemical characteristics separately with toxicity observed in both in vitro and in vivo models.