was determined
by an MTS assay, which was carried out with CellTiter 96 AQueous (Promega
Corp.) kit.25 (link) There were 1 × 104 BEAS-2B or RAW 264.7 cells in 100 μL of culture medium
plated in each well of a 96 multiwell black plate (Costar, Corning,
NY) for overnight growth. The medium was removed, and cells were treated
for 24 h with 100 μL of 50, 100 and 200 μg/mL nanoparticle
suspensions. After the treatment, the cell culture medium was removed
and followed by washing of the plates three times with PBS. Each well
received 100 μL of culture medium containing 16.7% of MTS stock
solution for 1 h at 37 °C in a humidified 5% CO2 incubator.
The plate was centrifuged at 2000g for 10 min in
NI Eppendorf 5430 with a microplate rotor to spin down the cell debris.
A 80 μL amount of the supernatant was removed from each well
and transferred into a new 96 multiwell plate. The absorbance of formazan
was read at 490 nm on a SpectraMax M5 microplate reader (Molecular
Devices Corp., Sunnyvale, CA, USA).