Novel nanomaterials for lab on a chip devices development: application to environmental stressors in food system and their effect on the oxidative stress in select cell

This thesis project is focused on the development of a high-tech platform capable to assess the level of oxidative stress (OS) in selected cell cultures and the effect of supplementation of functional food in the levels of OS. To do so, we will study and exploit different analytical techniques combined in a microfluidic system using a bottom-up strategy. Firstly, we will design and develop the sensing systems able to detect oxidative stress biomarkers and functional food components. Further, all the developed technology will be couple in a new integrated microfluidic platform able to quantify OS status and response to functional food supplementation of selected cell cultures. Doing so, we expect to pave the way to the study of oxidative stress depended diseases and it treatment using functional food. To date, a new nanomaterial based on carbon black (CB) and Prussian Blue (PB) was synthetized and optimized for the electrochemical sensing of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) in a range from 200 nM to 1 mM with a limt of detection (LOD) of 20 nM. This sensor was successfully applied to the determination of H2O2 in SHSY5Y differentiated in neurons cell cultures challenged with hydroxydopamine (6-OHDA) as model of Parkinson’s disease (Provided by Prof. Cimini group). The levels of H2O2 were followed by 24 h and it changes from 15.2±0.8 µM at 30 min to 51.9±0.3 µM at 24h. These results could pave the way for future studies of the role of H2O2 in Parkinson’s disease