Table 1.

Analytical methods for in vitro assessment of nanotoxicity

Toxic effect	Measurement	Assessment tools	Refs.
Metabolic activity	Mitochondrial activity assay	MTT assay	[80–83]
	Esterase activity	LIVE/DEAD assay	[84]
Membrane integrity	Membrane damage	LDH assay	[79]
		Trypan blue	[79]
		Propidium iodide	[79]
		Patch-clamp experiment	[85]
	Lysosomal activity	Neutral red	[80]
		Lucifer yellow	[86]
Apoptosis	Apoptotic signal	Annexin V	[87]
		Caspase-3	[80, 87]
Proliferation	Colony forming efficiency	Cologenic/clonogenic assay	[88]
Genotoxicity	DNA damage	Comet assay	[89, 90]
		Micronucleus assay	[91]
		TUNEL assay	[92]
	Gene mutation	Ames test	[92]
	Gene expression	qPCR	[92]
		Microarrays	[92]
	DNA replication	BrdU assay	[93]
Oxidative stress	Reactive oxygen species (ROS)	DCFH	[90, 94]
		EPR	[91, 94–97]
	Lipid peroxidation	TBA assay for MDA	[91, 94, 98]
		Amplex red	[94]
Immune stress	Cytokine	ELISA	[90, 99, 100]
		Western blotting	[101]
Motility	Cell migration	Wound healing assay	[102]
		Invasion assay	[51]
	Cytoskeletal structure	Phalloidin staining	[51]