ISSN print edition: 0366-6352 ISSN electronic edition: 1336-9075 Registr. No.: MK SR 9/7 Published monthly

Cytotoxicity of poly(p-phenylenediamine)

Zdenka Kuceková, Petra Rejmontová, Petr Humpolíček, Věra Kašpárková, Patrycja Bober, Petr Sáha, and Jaroslav Stejskal

Centre of Polymer Systems, Tomas Bata University in Zlin, Zlin, Czech Republic

E-mail: humpolicek@ft.utb.cz

Abstract: Although poly(p-phenylenediamine) is an electric non-conductor, it exhibits, analogously to conducting polymers, redox activity and could, therefore, find applications in biomedicine. In the current work, the cytotoxicity of poly(p-phenylenediamine) polymer powder produced by the chemical oxidation of p-phenylenediamine with ammonium peroxydisulfate in acidic aqueous media has been studied. Primary mouse embryonic fibroblasts were used for this purpose. Interestingly, the standard methods for the determination of polymer cytotoxicity based on international standard EN ISO 10993-5 could not be applied. The reason was the interaction of polymer extracts with MTT [3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide] assay. On the basis of the evaluation of flow cytometry and micrographs taken by fluorescence microscopy on cells treated with extracts of poly(p-phenylenediamine), it can be concluded that the powder polymer possesses severe cytotoxicity. The results suggest that practical application of the polymer within biomedicine is, at the current state of knowledge, difficult, and modification of the preparation techniques and/or subsequent purification of poly(p-phenylenediamine) is needed.

Keywords: Cytotoxicity; Poly(p-phenylenediamine); Mouse embryonic fibroblasts; Conducting polymers

Full paper is available at www.springerlink.com.

DOI: 10.1007/s11696-016-0069-4

Chemical Papers 71 (2) 367–372 (2017)