In vivo toxicity evaluation of boron nitride nanosheets with different sizes by silkworm model

Boron nitride nanosheets (BN NSs), a novel material with great potential in biomedical applications, have attracted great attention due to its extraordinary properties. A crucial issue is the toxicity of BN NSs, which depends greatly on various factors, including size. The size may affect viability of cells due to the interactions between BN NSs and cell membranes. In this study, two kinds of silkworms (qiufeng × baiyu, Nistari 7019) were used as models to investigate the toxicity of BN NSs with different sizes (BN NSs-1: thickness of 41.5 nm, average diameter of about 200 nm; BN NSs-2: thickness of 48.2 nm, average diameter of about 500 nm) from the levels of animal entirety (silkworm mortality, silkworm growth, cocoons) and tissues. The results show that exposure to different sized BN NSs causes no obvious adverse effects on the growth or tissues of silkworm. This study has performed size-dependent in vivo toxicity evaluation of BN NSs and provided safety information to enrich the database for better application of BN NSs. Further studies should be carried out to discover the biosafety of diverse sizes and shapes BN NSs.