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Successful Regrowth of Retinal Neurons When Cultured Interfaced to Carbon Nanotube Platforms
- Publication Year :
- 2017
-
Abstract
- A shared dream of ophthalmologists, neurologists and bioengineers is to recover sight ability in diseased eyes via coupling retinal cells with artificial devices. In the engineering of ophto-prosthetic devices the material directly exposed to the biological milieu is crucial, it has to guarantee tight contacts between retinal neurons and the interface, while assuring cell survival with physiological network development. Carbon nanotubes have been applied in several areas of nerve tissue engineering and are emerging as a promising material for neuro-interfacing applications, given their outstanding physical properties. In the current work we have tested carbon nanotube ability to interface cultured murine and human retinal neurons. We cultured rat retinal neurons on carbon nanotube substrates and described their morphology and synaptic functions via immunofluorescence microscopy and patch-clamp recordings. In a second set of experiments, we explored viability and morphology of human retinal ganglion cells (RGC) when grown on carbon nanotube substrates. We show here carbon nanotube ability to sustain the proper development of rat neurons and, more importantly, of human RGCs. In addition, patch-clamp recordings on rat retinal cells were functional to demonstrate that carbon nanotubes do not perturb the physiological synaptic activity when compared to controls. This result, strengthen by the shown biocompatibility with human cells and the nanotube well described high electrical conductivity, makes these nanomaterials promising candidates to interface, stimulate or record eye nerve cells.
- Subjects :
- Patch-Clamp
HRG Cell
Materials science
cultured retinal ganglion cells
Biomedical Engineering
implants
Pharmaceutical Science
Medicine (miscellaneous)
Nanotechnology
Bioengineering
02 engineering and technology
Carbon nanotube
010402 general chemistry
HRG Cells
Settore BIO/09 - Fisiologia
01 natural sciences
patch clamp
law.invention
chemistry.chemical_compound
law
neural interfaces
General Materials Science
Patch clamp
MWCNTs
retinal ganglion cell
Retinal-Neurons
Materials Science (all)
3003
Chromatography
carbon nanotubes
MWCNT
Retinal
021001 nanoscience & nanotechnology
0104 chemical sciences
retinal ganglion cell, human retina, implants, carbon nanotubes, patch clamp, neural interfaces, cultured retinal ganglion cells
chemistry
human retina
Retinal-Neuron
0210 nano-technology
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....643e01474dd0cf0f5d7bfd24880226bb