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Abstract
Multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) are composed of multiple coaxially arranged graphene cylinders. MWCNTs range in diameter from 1 to over 100 nm depending on the number of constituting graphene cylinders. MWCNTs can be divided into two general subtypes, straight and tangled: increasing the number of constituent graphene cylinders increases the number of layers that compose the carbon nanotube wall, and as the number of wall layers increase, the wall thickness increases and the MWCNT becomes more rigid and straight. MWCNTs with a low number of wall layers are flexible and can assemble into tangled agglomerates. We initially showed MWCNT-N, a straight-type MWCNT with 30-40 walls, induced lung tumors and mesotheliomas after administration by intra-tracheal intra-pulmonary spraying (TIPS): rats were administered a total dose of 1mg/rat during the initial 2 weeks of the study, and animals were observed for 2 years without any further treatments. Using this short-term dosing and 2-year observation method we conducted carcinogenicity tests for other MWCNTs with different cylinder wall layers. We found that both straight type MWCNTs, MWCNT-7 (40 layers), MWCNT-A (150 layers), and tangled type MWCNTs, MWCNT-B (15 layers) and double-walled CNT (DWCNT) (2 layers) induced lung tumors and/or pleural mesotheliomas. In contrast to these results, we found carbon nanohorns, carbon nanostructures composed of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNT), and carbon nanobrushes, a fibrous aggregate of carbon nanohorns, were not carcinogenic. Data on foreign body radical production, microarray and mutational signature analyses, and gene alterations will be presented.