engleski

Morphological properties of neonatal spiral ganglion neurons cultured in-vitro on graphene- and hBN-based substrates

Graphene-based substrates represent viable alternatives for neuroelectronic interfaces paving the way for future neuro-prosthetics. Previously, it was shown that graphene might support neural sprouting and cell adhesion due to their unique electric and electrochemical properties, while hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) showed high potential in biomedical applications due to its stability, proccessibility, parameter tunability and biocompatibility. However, it is not known how graphene or hBN interacts with spiral ganglion neurons (SGN), primary-like type of sensory neurons conveying auditory information. In this study, we explored in-vitro growth of neonatal SGN cultured on three types of graphene-based surfaces (single layer graphene, hydrogenated graphene, and fluorinated graphene) as well on hBN. Neurons were examined for various morphological properties. We also assessed the effect of coating which is found to be enhancing cell adhesion [1], [2]. The cultures at four days in vitro (4DIV) were immunocytochemically stained, and the subsequent fluorescence images were analyzed with the custom-made machine learning based image processing. We found that SGN neurons grown on all four tested substrates without coating are as abundant as on the control glass coverslips, while the cell density was similar to non- coated glass coverslips. Importantly, the coating of the graphene and hBN substrates seems to impair cell growth and cell density. We also found that the hBN substrates produced the densest SGN cultures of all investigated substrates. These findings point out that the graphene-based, in particular, hBN type of substrates could be used for auditory neuroelectronic interfaces.

Spiral ganglion neurons, Graphene, hBN

nije evidentirano