Examining the immunotoxicity of oil sands process affected waters using a human macrophage cell line

Toxicology. 2023 Nov 23;500:153680. doi: 10.1016/j.tox.2023.153680. Online ahead of print.ABSTRACTOil sands process affected water (OSPW) is produced during the surface mining of the oil sands bitumen deposits in Northern Alberta. OSPW contains variable quantities of organic and inorganic components causing toxic effects on living organisms. Advanced Oxidation Processes (AOPs) are widely used to degrade toxic organic components from OSPW including naphthenic acids (NAs). However, there is no established biological procedure to assess the effectiveness of the remediation processes. Our previous study showed that human macrophage cells (THP-1) can be used as a bioindicator system to evaluate the effectiveness of OSPW treatments through examining the proinflammatory gene transcription levels. In the present study, we investigated the immunotoxicological changes in THP-1 cells following exposure to untreated and AOP-treated OSPW. Specifically, using proinflammatory cytokine protein secretion assays we showed that AOP treatment significantly abrogates the ability of OSPW to induce the secretion of IL-1β, IL-6, IL-8, TNF-α, IL-1Ra and MCP-1. By measuring transcriptional activity as well as surface protein expression levels, we also showed that two select immune cell surface markers, CD40 and CD54, were significantly elevated following OSPW exposure. However, AOP treatments abolished the immunostimulatory properties of OSPW to enhance the surface expression of these immune protein...

Source: Toxicology - November 25, 2023 Category: Toxicology Authors: Sunanda Paul Nora A S Hussain Dustin M E Lillico Monsuru A Suara Soliu O Ganiyu Mohamed Gamal El-Din James L Stafford Source Type: research