Graphene quantum dots alleviate ROS-mediated gastric damage

Preety Choudhary; Sushama Biswas; Noufal Kandoth; Deepak Tayde; Abhishek Chatterjee; Samit Chattopadhyay; Amitava Das; Snehasikta Swarnakar; Sumit Kumar Pramanik

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2022.104062

Graphene quantum dots alleviate ROS-mediated gastric damage

iScience. 2022 Mar 12;25(4):104062. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2022.104062. eCollection 2022 Apr 15.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Biology, 4, Raja S. C. Mullick Road, Kolkata 700 032, India.
² CSIR-Central Salt and Marine Chemicals Research Institute, Bhavnagar, Gujarat, India.
³ Department of Chemical Sciences, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Kolkata 741246, India.
⁴ Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research (AcSIR), Ghaziabad 201002, India.
⁵ BITS Pilani K K Birla Goa Campus, NH 17B, Bypass, Road, Zuarinagar, Sancoale, Goa 403726, India.

Abstract

The gastrointestinal (GI) tract is one of the major sites for reactive oxygen species generation (ROS). Physiological ROS, lower than the threshold concentration, is beneficial for human physiology to preserve gut functional integrity. However, ROS generated in large quantities in presence of external stimuli overwhelms the cellular antioxidant defense mechanism and results in oxidative damage and associated physiological disorder. Graphene quantum dots (GQDs) are a class of carbon-based nanomaterials that have attracted tremendous attention not only for their tunable optical properties but also for their broad-spectrum antioxidant properties. In this report we have shown that GQDs are highly efficient in scavenging ROS and suppressing stress-induced gastric ulcers by targeting the MMP-9 pathway and reducing the inflammatory burden by suppressing excessive oxidative stress by inducing high caspase activity, overproduction of Bax, and downregulation of BCL2.

Keywords: Human metabolism; Materials science; Molecular biology; Nanomaterials.