Toxicity evaluation of SPIONs on Danio rerio embryonic development

SPIONs are used in various medical applications such as targeted drug delivery, cancer therapy, MRI- imaging etc due to their physicochemical properties such as magnetic property, large surface to volume ratio etc. Its toxicity is yet to be evaluated fully in order to avoid adverse effects on living organisms when directly used for any of the aforementioned applications. In this study, SPIONs were synthesized and properties such as its absorbance pattern, functional groups, size and superparamagnetism were characterized using Ultraviolet Visible Spectroscopy (UV–Vis), Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and Vibrating Sample Magnetometer (VSM) respectively. The toxicity of the synthesized SPIONs were investigated against zebrafish (Danio rerio) embryo. It was discovered that SPIONs were toxic in nature.