Possible autocatalytic reduction of resazurin by MXenes with clutured cells

Abstract

MXenes is a novel class of layered planar compounds with potentially wide application in many fields including in biomedicine [1]. The MXenes have been shown to be generally non toxic for living cells [2]. Metabolic assays, both resazurin redution assay and the tetrazolium dye (MTT) redcution assay are often used to measure viability a of cells. We set out to study cytotoxicity of Ti3C2Tx MXenes in cultures of the Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) and human mesenchymal stem (hMSC) cells using resazurin reduction assay (RRA). The RRA generally well collerates with the viability of the cells judged by the number and the visual appearance of the cells observed under light microscope. We confirmed that the MXenes were non toxic for the cells in the range of concentrations up to 5 μg/ml. We also found that MXenes become toxic to the cells at excessive concentrations, which could be well explained e.g. by unspecific interaction of MXenes via their sharp edges [3,4] with the cell membranes.