Immunotoxicity articles from across Nature Portfolio

Understanding nanomaterials interactions with complement is important for a number of applications. Here, the authors study the interaction of sub 6 nm dendrimers with complement and show the small dendrimers escape complement activation but do interact with IgM to trigger lectin-pathway complement activation.

Immunoglobulins mediate deposition of the third complement protein (C3) on the biomolecule corona of nanoparticles, promoting complement activation.

Mice pre-treated with lipopolysaccharides and metal nanoparticles, 10 nm or smaller, can cause a CD4⁺ T-cell-dependent allergic response similar to metal allergy seen in humans, suggesting that metal nanoparticles could potentially be a new trigger for metal allergy.