Graphene and its derivatives have become great concern in biomedical fields. Though many investigations about their toxicity have been reported, systematic investigation on the interaction with multiple blood components is lacking. In this work, we studied the effects of the graphene oxide (GO) on the structure and function of the blood components, especially, on morphology and hemolysis of red blood cells (RBCs), bovine serum albumin (BSA) and fibrinogen conformation, complement activation, and blood coagulation function. Scanning electron microscopy observation and hemolysis test results showed that the GO can affect RBC morphology and membrane integrity in a concentration-dependent way. Fluorescence and circular dichroism spectra showed that GO could alter the secondary structures and conformation of BSA and fibrinogen. In addition, the presence of GO could also trigger complement activation by detecting their key biomarker molecules in plasma. In the blood clotting process, the GO showed significant adverse effect on the activated partial thromboplastin time but not on prothrombin time of the platelet-poor plasma. Meanwhile, the GO also caused abnormal thromboelastography parameters of the whole blood coagulation. The results obtained in this study provides good insight into understanding the biomedical application of GO in vivo.
Keywords: blood clotting; complement activation; graphene oxide; plasma proteins; red blood cells.
© 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.