Jana Petković

On Wednesday, April 6th 2011, on Medical faculty, University of Ljubljana, Jana Petković defended her doctoral thesis entitled »Mechanisms of toxicity and genotoxicity of TiO2 nanoparticles” in the field of biochemistry and molecular biology, under the mentorship of prof. dr. Metka Filipič.

Dr. Jana Petković started her research work in 2006 as a young scientist on Department of Genetic Toxicology and Cancer Biology on National Institute of Biology. In her PhD thesis she studied toxicity and genotoxicity mechanisms of nanoparticles of titanium dioxide (TiO2). Because of their small size, nanoparticles (<100 nm) have unique properties compared with their larger counterparts, which enable their applications in many areas.

Lately, they are causing increased concern due to their greater production and potential release into the environment, while our knowledge on their potential adverse effects on humans and environment remains very limited. One of the most frequently used nanoparticles is TiO2. Because of its low toxicity it is widely used in the production of cosmetics, food, paints, paper, etc. However, recent studies have shown that nano-sized TiO2 can cause oxidative stress, DNA damage, inflammation, liver damage etc. With modern methods of in vitro genetic toxicology and molecular biology, dr. Jana Petković showed that exposure of human hepatoma cells HepG2 to TiO2 nanoparticles caused oxidative stress, DNA damage and apoptosis, which can increase risk for development of cancer and other diseases. Regarding that there is very little data about mechanisms of toxic and genotoxic potential of TiO2 nanoparticles, our results will improve general knowledge about nanoparticles potential genotoxicity, which is important for risk assessment and proposing preventive actions to limit human exposure.

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