Publications related to Laboratory of Environmental Toxicology

Organ-specific biotransformation in salmonids: Insight into intrinsic enzyme activity and biotransformation of three micropollutants

Aquatic ecosystems continue to be threatened by chemical pollution. To what extent organisms are able to cope with chemical exposure depends on their ability to display mechanisms of defense across different organs. Among these mechanisms, biotransformatio ...

Elsevier2024

The Bioaccumulation of Ionizable Organic Compounds in Fish Cell Lines

Fabian Gerhard Peter Balk

Bioaccumulation is defined as the enrichment of a compound in an organism relative to the surrounding water or its food, and is an important endpoint in chemical risk assessment. Under laboratory conditions, bioaccumulation is measured as bioconcentration ...

EPFL2023

Evaluation of tire tread particle toxicity to fish using rainbow trout cell lines

Kristin Schirmer, Florian Frédéric Vincent Breider, Benoît Jean Dominique Ferrari, Thibault Béranger Masset, Gabrielle Léger

Tire and road wear particles (TRWP) resulting from tire abrasion while driving raise concerns due to their potential contribution to aquatic toxicity. Our study aimed to assess cryogenically milled tire tread (CMTT) particle toxicity, used as a proxy for T ...

2023

Bioaccessibility of Organic Compounds Associated with Tire Particles Using a Fish In Vitro Digestive Model: Solubilization Kinetics and Effects of Food Coingestion

Kristin Schirmer, Florian Frédéric Vincent Breider, Dominique Grandjean, Benoît Jean Dominique Ferrari, Thibault Béranger Masset, Luke Christopher Harris

Tire and road wear particles (TRWP) account for an important part of the polymer particles released into the environment. There are scientific knowledge gaps as to the potential bioaccessibility of chemicals associated with TRWP to aquatic organisms. This ...

2022

In vitro acute toxicity assessment of tire tread particles using rainbow trout cell lines of gill and intestine

Kristin Schirmer, Florian Frédéric Vincent Breider, Benoît Jean Dominique Ferrari, Thibault Béranger Masset

Tire and road wear particles (TRWP) are generated by the abrasion of tires while driving, and recent questions were raised in regards to their potential contribution to microplastics released into the aquatic environment and their potential toxicological i ...

2021

A ribonucleoprotein transfection strategy for CRISPR/Cas9-mediated gene editing and single cell cloning in rainbow trout cells

Kristin Schirmer

Background The advent of the Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR)/Cas9 technology marked the beginning of a new era in the field of molecular biology, allowing the efficient and precise creation of targeted mutations in the ge ...

2021

Toxicity and translocation of Ag, CuO, ZnO and TiO2 nanoparticles upon exposure to fish intestinal epithelial cells

Kristin Schirmer, Laura Sigg

Understanding the ability of fish intestinal cells to act as a barrier for nanoparticle (NP) uptake and their effects is of significance from an environmental perspective as well as for human health, for which fish serves as an important nutrient source. W ...

ROYAL SOC CHEMISTRY2021

New Stable Cell Lines Derived from the Proximal and Distal Intestine of Rainbow Trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) Retain Several Properties Observed In Vivo

Kristin Schirmer

We derived two novel cell lines from rainbow trout (RT) proximal (RTpi-MI) and distal intestine (RTdi-MI) and compared them with the previously established continuous cell line RTgutGC. Intestinal stem cells, differentiating and differentiated epithelial c ...

MDPI2021

Cytotoxicity, Accumulation and Translocation of Silver and Silver Sulfide Nanoparticles in contact with Rainbow Trout Intestinal Cells

Kristin Schirmer, Laura Sigg

Silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs) are widely used in consumer products especially because of their antimicrobial properties. However, this wide usage of Ag NPs is accompanied by their release into the environment where they will be rapidly transformed to other ...

ELSEVIER2021

In Vitro Digestion of Tire Particles in a Fish Model (Oncorhynchus mykiss): Solubilization Kinetics of Heavy Metals and Effects of Food Coingestion

Kristin Schirmer, Florian Frédéric Vincent Breider, Benoît Jean Dominique Ferrari, Thibault Béranger Masset

Tire and road wear particles (TRWP) have been shown to represent a large part of anthropogenic particles released into the environment. Nevertheless, the potential ecological risk of TRWP in the different environmental compartments and their potential toxi ...

2021

Biotin-NeutrAvidin Mediated Immobilization of Polymer Micro- and Nanoparticles on T Lymphocytes

Harm-Anton Klok, Olivier Burri, Arne Seitz, Romain Guiet, Maxime Ayer

Cells are powerful carriers that can help to improve the delivery of nanomedicines. One approach to use cells as carriers is to immobilize the nanoparticulate cargo on the cell surface. While a plethora of chemical conjugation strategies are available to b ...

2021

Covalent and Noncovalent Conjugation of Degradable Polymer Nanoparticles to T Lymphocytes

Harm-Anton Klok, Tanja Thomsen

Cells are attractive as carriers that can help to enhance control over the biodistribution of polymer nanomedicines. One strategy to use cells as carriers is based on the cell surface immobilization of the nanoparticle cargo. While a range of strategies ca ...

American Chemical Society2021

Approaches to Test the Neurotoxicity of Environmental Contaminants in the Zebrafish Model: From Behavior to Molecular Mechanisms

Anze Zupanic, Sarah-Katharina Könemann, Colette vom Berg

The occurrence of neuroactive chemicals in the aquatic environment is on the rise and poses a potential threat to aquatic biota of currently unpredictable outcome. In particular, subtle changes caused by these chemicals to an organism's sensation or behavi ...

2021

Extending the Concept of Predicting Fish Acute Toxicity In Vitro to the Intestinal Cell Line RTgutGC

Kristin Schirmer, Hannah Inka Schug, Jenny Maner

Testing chemicals for fish acute toxicity is a legal requirement in many countries as part of environmental risk assessment. To reduce the number of fish used, substantial efforts have been focused on alternative approaches. Prominently, the cell viability ...

2020

Bio-Inspired Tensegrity Fish Robot

Dario Floreano, Jun Shintake, Davide Zappetti, Timothée John Martin Peter, Yusuke Ikemoto

This paper presents a method to create fish-like robots with tensegrity systems and describes a prototype modeled on the body shape of the rainbow trout with a length of 400 mm and a mass of 102 g that is driven by a waterproof servomotor. The structure of ...

IEEE2020

A fish intestinal barrier model to assess the interaction with chemicals in vitro

Hannah Inka Schug

The intestinal epithelium acts as vital gate keeper between the fish and its surrounding environment. A single layer of connected epithelial cells forms a selective barrier, which, among other essential functions, is important for nutrient uptake and defen ...

EPFL2019

Improving a fish intestinal barrier model by combining two rainbow trout cell lines: epithelial RTgutGC and fibroblastic RTgutF

Philippe Renaud, Kristin Schirmer, Carolin Drieschner, Hannah Inka Schug

An in vitro model of the fish intestine is of interest for research and application in diverse fields such as fish physiology, aquaculture and chemical risk assessment. The recently developed epithelial barrier model of the fish intestine relies on the RTg ...

Springer2019

Intestinal Fish Cell Barrier Model to Assess Transfer of Organic Chemicals in Vitro: An Experimental and Computational Study

Kristin Schirmer, Hannah Inka Schug, Anze Zupanic, Jenny Maner

We studied the role of the fish intestine as a barrier for organic chemicals using the epithelial barrier model built on the rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) intestinal cell line, RTgutGC and the newly developed exposure chamber, TransFEr, specifically ...

AMER CHEMICAL SOC2019

Fish-gut-on-chip: development of a microfluidic bioreactor to study the role of the fish intestine in vitro

Philippe Renaud, Kristin Schirmer, Sarah-Katharina Könemann, Carolin Drieschner

In this study we present the first fish-gut-on-chip model. This model is based on the reconstruction of the intestinal barrier by culturing two intestinal cell lines from rainbow trout, namely epithelial RTgutGC and fibroblastic RTgutF, in an artificial mi ...

2019

What is the role of fish intestine as environment-organism barrier? Mechanistic investigations using fish intestinal cells on a chip

Carolin Drieschner

The gut of fish belongs to the most essential barriers that mark the border between the organism and its surrounding environment. The pivotal barrier function, allowing to absorb nutrients from the diet while simultaneously protecting the organism from pat ...

EPFL2018