Organic Functional Group on Carbon Nanotube Modulates the Maturation of SH-SY5Y Neuronal Models.

Carbon nanotubes (CNT) have proven to be excellent substrates for neuronal cultures, showing high affinity and greatly boosting their synaptic functionality. Therefore, growing cells on CNT offers an opportunity to perform a large variety of neuropathology studies in vitro. To date, the interactions between neurons and chemical functional groups have not been studied extensively. To this end, we functionalized multi-walled CNT (f-CNT) with various functional groups, including sulfonic (─SO 3 H), nitro (-NO 2 ), amino (─NH 2 ), and oxidized moieties. f-CNTs were spray-coated onto untreated glass substrates and used as substrates for the incubation of neuroblastoma cells (SH-SY5Y). After 7 days, its effect was evaluated in terms of cell attachment, survival, growth and spontaneous differentiation. Cell viability assays showed quite increased proliferation on various f-CNT substrates (CNTs-NO 2 > ox-CNTs ≈ CNTs-SO 3 H > CNTs ≈ CNTs-NH 2 ). Additionally, SH-SY5Y cells showed selectively better differentiation and maturation with ─SO 3 H substrates, where an increased expression of β-III tubulin was seen. In all cases, intricate cell-CNT networks were observed and the morphology of the cells adopted longer and thinner cellular processes, suggesting that the type of functionalization may have an effect of the length and thickness. Finally, we determined a possible correlation between conductivity of f-CNTs and cell-processes lengths. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.