Review on Biocompatibility of ZnO Nano Particles

ZnO nano-particles have some unique properties like piezoelectric, semiconducting, catalytic properties and antibacterial activities. Thus these particles are widely used in optoelectronics, sensors, transducers, energy conversion and also in medical sciences. Zinc oxide nano-particles have the potential to function as natural selective killers of all highly proliferating cells, whether cancerous or not. The application of zinc oxide nano-particles in cancer therapy looks intriguing and exciting, specific tumor cell targeting will be essential (e.g., by nano-particle functionalization with cell ligands) because these nano-particles are killers of all rapidly proliferating cells, irrespective of their benign or malignant nature. So the cellular level biocompatibility and biosafety of ZnO is studied here. Hela cell line showed a complete biocompatibility to ZnO nanostructures from low to high NW concentrations beyond a couple of production periods. The L929 cell line showed a good reproduction behavior at lower NW concentration, but when the concentration was close to 100 mu g/ml, the viability dropped to similar to 50 %. Our study shows the biocompetability and biosafety of ZnO NWs when they are applied in biological applications at normal concentration range.