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, multiwalled CNT (f-CNT) is functionalized with various functional groups, including sulfonic (-SO3 H), nitro (-NO2 ), amino (-NH2 ), and oxidized moieties. f-CNTs are spray-coated onto untreated glass substrates and are used as substrates for the incubation of neuroblastoma cells (SH-SY5Y). After 7 d, its effect is evaluated in terms of cell attachment, survival, growth, and spontaneous differentiation. Cell viability assays show quite increased proliferation on various f-CNT substrates (CNTs-NO2 > ox-CNTs ≈ CNTs-SO3 H > CNTs ≈ CNTs-NH2 ). Additionally, SH-SY5Y cells show selectively better differentiation and maturation with -SO3 H substrates, where an increased expression of β-III tubulin is seen. In all cases, intricate cell-CNT networks are observed and the morphology of the cells adopts longer and thinner cellular processes, suggesting that the type of functionalization may have an effect of the length and thickness. Finally, a possible correlation is determined between conductivity of f-CNTs and cell-processes lengths.
Keywords: carbon nanotubes; differentiation; functionalization; neural interfacing; neuroblastoma; tissue engineering.
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