New Tool For Environmental Health and Safety Evaluations of Cellulose: Fluorescently Labeled Fibrillated Cellulose!

Vireo Advisors is a proud contributor to the newly published “Fluorescently Labeled Cellulose Nanofibers for Environmental Health and Safety Studies”. The work stems from a unique collaboration of private (US Endowment, Vireo, and seven companies), public (USFS, NIST, Alberta Innovates), and academic partners (American University, Harvard, Oregon State University) that pooled technical and financial resources to advance the safety demonstration of next-generation forms of cellulose. The labeling addresses a fundamental difficulty in evaluating the safety of new forms of cellulose: how to detect and quantify a carbon-based material in complex biological or environmental media.

This work demonstrates a methodology for labelling cellulose nanofibers (CNFs) with a new boron-dipyrromethene (BODIPY) reactive fluorescent probe, meso-DichlorotriazineEthyl BODIPY (mDTEB). The study also evaluates the use of the labeled CNF in human (using an in vitro intestinal tri-culture model) and environmental (using zebrafish) exposure studies. The fluorescent label was stable throughout a variety of simulated biological and environmental media, and no cytotoxicity was observed for either the labelled or pristine form. The work allows quantitative measurement of fibrillated cellulose in complex matrices.